Pro Ecclesia Sancta | Together in Christ Newsletter |
One could say that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was first conceived the moment the Blessed Virgin became aware of the unborn Child within her, even before the divine Heart of the tiny Savior began to beat. It might be said, as well, that the devotion was born that first Christmas night, when Mary beheld her newborn Son, whose heart even then pulsated with love for mankind. It could also be argued that devotion to that Heart took root the night before Our Lord suffered, when St. John laid his head upon the divine breast, irresistibly attracted to the beatings of a Heart which expanded to “love His own in the world to the extreme” (cf. Jn 13:1). Finally, one could claim that this devotion became the public property of the Church the moment this same heart was pierced on the cross and poured forth blood and water in a superabundance of love for mankind.
Whenever this devotion began, the real question is, when did it become real for you? A tender devotion to the divine Love made flesh in the person of Jesus Christ has always been at the heart of what it means to be a Christian. Is it, then, at the center of your spiritual life, of your relationship with the One who made you?
Popes have described devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus with such glowing terms as “a summary of our religion” (Pius XI), and a “mystical ladder by which we mount to the embrace of ‘God our Savior’” (Pius XII). Unfortunately, however, many regular Christians fail to appreciate its real meaning. Perhaps they get hung up on the imagery of the devotion; they are confused by the sight of Jesus Christ with his heart exposed upon His breast, or are turned off by the outdated and perhaps overly-sentimental depictions given Him by ages past. Or, perhaps they dismiss the devotion as one of those “extra credit options” for Catholics with too much time for prayer; a mere pastime of Church ladies who take their leisure in adoration chapels.
Ah, if they only knew what it was really about! Devotion to the Sacred Heart is a highway to intimacy with Jesus, a crash-course in the love of God. It is an invitation to listen to the words which Jesus spoke to St. Margaret Mary not so very long ago, in a world in which “the love of men had waxed cold” (Mt 24:12), not unlike it has in our own. Thus Jesus broke His silence in order to complain of the pain that He felt over His Heart’s unrequited love: “Behold this Heart,” He said, “which has so loved men, that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself in order to testify to its love. In return, I have received from the greater part only ingratitude, by their irreverence and their sacrilege, and by the coldness and contempt they have for Me in this sacrament of Love.”
