The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
June 27, 2014
BELOVED OF GOD, out of love you were created, out of love you were redeemed, in love you were called, and for love you have been sent. You are the Sacred Heart of Jesus – a living testimony to the love of the one, true God.
Images and sculptures with stylised hearts crowned with thorns, burning, or bleeding, abound; the long history of devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus has its origins in Christ's ultimate act of self-giving, as he hung dead on the cross, His side pierced, and from it flowing blood and water.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart begins when our understanding of God and our relationship to Him converges on the profound acts of love of which we are witnesses and beneficiaries.
The love in the Incarnation is the love of the Sacred Heart.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” [John 3:16]
The love of the Sacred Heart is expressed first in the desire of God that creation should have some share in the divine life of love. Throughout the ages, God has sought to lead his people towards Himself and into eternal life with Him. Throughout the history of man, we have collectively spurned the love of God, such that, in our own age, God chose to express, to the fullest extent, the depth of His love and compassion through the Incarnation of Christ.
The love in Christ’s teaching is the love of the Sacred Heart.
“You shall go ahead of the Lord to prepare his ways before him; to make known to his people their salvation through forgiveness of all their sins, the loving kindness of the heart of our God who visits us like the dawn from on high.” [Luke 1:76-78]
The ministry of Jesus, as expressed through the prophetic words of John the Baptist, was to enunciate the love and compassion of God. Despite miraculous acts of love throughout the history of the Chosen People, God’s infinite love was never fully understood. The Sacred Heart is the ministry of Jesus, through which the love of God is revealed through his teachings, his miracles, his relationships and ultimately through the new commandment: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” [John 13:34]
The love in the Crucifixion is the love of the Sacred Heart.
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” [1John 4:10]
Notwithstanding this new commandment given to his disciples, the love of the Sacred Heart is not demanding. It requires nothing of us and is given freely as the ultimate model of love, which gives all even before it has the chance to receive. Christ is the love of God personified; a love that is pure self-giving – for what did we ever do to merit our God to undergo death for our sins? Christ crucified is the Sacred Heart, for it is through this sacrifice that the reality and fullness of God’s love is made manifest.
The love in the sending of the Spirit is the love of the Sacred Heart.
“Through him we have obtained access, by faith, to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. … And hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” [Romans 5:2,5]
If the passion and death of Christ is the pinnacle of God’s love, then the sending of the Holy Spirit is enduring proof of that love – for Christ chose not that his death and resurrection should bring redemption for the people of one time, but for all people of all ages. The Holy Spirit, which is the bond of love that binds the Trinity is sent into the world as the abiding presence of God’s love for us, that we shall not be left orphans but rather always have the means to seek and find the love of God. In breathing the Spirit upon the apostles and sending him upon the Church for all time, the Sacred Heart of Jesus shows that his love endures forever.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus is most profoundly experienced as pure divine love. It is a love so great that, when we encounter it, we are always found wanting; for no human love, however pious and well-intentioned can ever compare to the love that has been given to us by God, through Christ, in the Holy Spirit. It is appropriate, then, that devotion to the Sacred Heart should first acknowledge the insufficiency of our own love before the heart of him who gives all for love. Only from this position of reparation are we then able to undertake the conversion of life that results in the abandonment of self for a total reliance on the love of God.
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