The Vatican published Pope Francis' fourth encyclical, Dilexit Nos (He loved us), quoting the words of St. Paul in his letter to the Romans (8:37). The encyclical, published on October 24, 2024, focuses on devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and is subtitled 'the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ'.
The encyclical coincides with the 350th anniversary of the apparitions of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary at Paray-le-Monial, France between 1673 and 1675 in which Our Lord asked her to promote devotion to His Sacred Heart. Here are some extracts from this encyclical in which the Holy Father stresses the importance of devotion to the Sacred Heart as a remedy for the ills of today's society.
by Pope Francis
We need the help of God's love. Let us turn, then, to the heart of Christ, that core of his being, which is a blazing furnace of divine and human love and the most sublime fulfilment to which humanity can aspire. There, in that heart, we truly come at last to know ourselves and we learn how to love.
In the end, that Sacred Heart is the unifying principle of all reality, since "Christ is the heart of the world, and the paschal mystery of his death and resurrection is the center of history, which, because of him, is a history of salvation" (St. John Paul II, Angelus, 28 June 1998). In the presence of the heart of Christ, I once more ask the Lord to have mercy on this suffering world in which he chose to dwell as one of us. May he pour out the treasures of his light and love, so that our world, which presses forward despite wars, socio-economic disparities and uses of technology that threaten our humanity, may regain the most important and necessary thing of all: its heart.
Many pages of the Gospel illustrate how attentive Jesus was to individuals and above all to their problems and needs. We are told that, "when he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless" (Mt. 9:36). Whenever we feel that everyone ignores us, that no one cares what becomes of us, that we are of no importance to anyone, he remains concerned for us. To Nathanael, standing apart and busy about his own affairs, he could say, "I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you" (Jn 1:48).
Precisely out of concern for us, Jesus knows every one of our good intentions and small acts of charity. The Gospel tells us that once he "saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins" in the Temple treasury (Lk 21:2) and immediately brought it to the attention of his disciples. Jesus thus appreciates the good that he sees in us. When the centurion approached him with complete confidence, "Jesus listened to him and was amazed" (Mt 8:10). How reassuring it is to know that, even if others are not aware of our good intentions or actions, Jesus sees them and regards them highly.
Devotion to the heart of Christ is not the veneration of a single organ apart from the person of Jesus. What we contemplate and adore is the whole Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, represented by an image that accentuates his heart. That heart of flesh is seen as the privileged sign of the inmost being of the incarnate Son and his love, both divine and human. More than any other part of his body, the heart of Jesus is "the natural sign and symbol of his boundless love".
It is essential to realize that our relationship to the person of Jesus Christ is one of friendship and adoration, drawn by the love represented under the image of his heart. We venerate that image, yet our worship is directed solely to the living Christ, in his divinity and his plenary humanity, so that we may be embraced by his human and divine love.
Whatever the image employed, it is clear that the living heart of Christ – not its representation – is the object of our worship, for it is part of his holy risen body, which is inseparable from the Son of God who assumed that body forever. We worship it because it is "the heart of the person of the Word, to whom it is inseparably united". Nor do we worship it for its own sake, but because with this heart the incarnate Son is alive, loves us and receives our love in return. Any act of love or worship of his heart is thus "really and truly given to Christ himself", since it spontaneously refers back to him and is "a symbol and a tender image of the infinite love of Jesus Christ".
For this reason, it should never be imagined that this devotion may distract or separate us from Jesus and his love. In a natural and direct way, it points us to him and to him alone, who calls us to a precious friendship marked by dialogue, affection, trust and adoration. The Christ we see depicted with a pierced and burning heart is the same Christ who, for love of us, was born in Bethlehem, passed through Galilee healing the sick, embracing sinners and showing mercy. The same Christ who loved us to the very end, opening wide his arms on the cross, who then rose from the dead and now lives among us in glory.
While the image of Christ and his heart is not in itself an object of worship, neither is it simply one among many other possible images. It was not devised at a desk or designed by an artist; it is "no imaginary symbol, but a real symbol which represents the center, the source from which salvation flowed for all humanity".
It is understandable, then, that the Church has chosen the image of the heart to represent the human and divine love of Jesus Christ and the inmost core of his person. Yet, while the depiction of a heart afire may be an eloquent symbol of the burning love of Jesus Christ, it is important that this heart not be represented apart from him. In this way, his summons to a personal relationship of encounter and dialogue will become all the more meaningful. The venerable image portraying Christ holding out his loving heart also shows him looking directly at us, inviting us to encounter, dialogue and trust; it shows his strong hands capable of supporting us and his lips that speak personally to each of us.
Certain of these representations may indeed strike us as tasteless and not particularly conducive to affection or prayer. Yet this is of little importance, since they are only invitations to prayer, and, to cite an Eastern proverb, we should not limit our gaze to the finger that points us to the moon. Whereas the Eucharist is a real presence to be worshiped, sacred images, albeit blessed, point beyond themselves, inviting us to lift up our hearts and to unite them to the heart of the living Christ. The image we venerate thus serves as a summons to make room for an encounter with Christ, and to worship him in whatever way we wish to picture him. Standing before the image, we stand before Christ, and in his presence, "love pauses, contemplates mystery, and enjoys it in silence".
In contemplating Christ's heart we also see how, in his fine and noble sentiments, his kindness and gentleness and his signs of genuine human affection, the deeper truth of his infinite divine love is revealed. In the words of Benedict XVI, "from the infinite horizon of his love, God wished to enter into the limits of human history and the human condition. He took on a body and a heart. Thus, we can contemplate and encounter the infinite in the finite, the invisible and ineffable mystery in the human heart of Jesus the Nazarene".
The image of the Lord's heart speaks to us in fact of a threefold love. First, we contemplate his infinite divine love. Then our thoughts turn to the spiritual dimension of his humanity, in which the heart is "the symbol of that most ardent love which, infused into his soul, enriches his human will". Finally, "it is a symbol also of his sensible love".
These three loves are not separate, parallel or disconnected, but together act and find expression in a constant and vital unity. For "by faith, through which we believe that the human and divine nature were united in the person of Christ, we can see the closest bonds between the tender love of the physical heart of Jesus and the twofold spiritual love, namely human and divine".
Devotion to the heart of Jesus, as a direct contemplation of the Lord that draws us into union with him, is clearly Christological in nature. We see this in the letter to the Hebrews, which urges us to "run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus" (12:2). At the same time, we need to realize that Jesus speaks of himself as the way to the Father: "I am the way. No one comes to the Father except through me" (Jn 14:6). Jesus wants to bring us to the Father. That is why, from the very beginning, the Church's preaching does not end with Jesus, but with the Father. As source and fullness, the Father is ultimately the one to be glorified.
In numerous ways, Christ's heart has always been present in the history of Christian spirituality. In the Scriptures and in the early centuries of the Church's life, it appeared under the image of the Lord's wounded side, as a fountain of grace and a summons to a deep and loving encounter. In this same guise, it has reappeared in the writings of numerous saints, past and present. In recent centuries, this spirituality has gradually taken on the specific form of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
A number of my Predecessors have spoken in various ways about the heart of Christ and exhorted us to unite ourselves to it. At the end of the nineteenth century, Leo XIII encouraged us to consecrate ourselves to the Sacred Heart, thus uniting our call to union with Christ and our wonder before the magnificence of his infinite love (Encyclical Letter Annum Sacrum, May 25, 1899). Some thirty years later, Pius XI presented this devotion as a "summa" of the experience of Christian faith (Encyclical Letter Miserentissimus Redemptor, May 8, 1928). Pius XII went on to declare that adoration of the Sacred Heart expresses in an outstanding way, as a sublime synthesis, the worship we owe to Jesus Christ (Encyclical Letter Haurietis Aquas, May 15, 1956).
More recently, Saint John Paul II presented the growth of this devotion in recent centuries as a response to the rise of rigorist and disembodied forms of spirituality that neglected the richness of the Lord’s mercy. At the same time, he saw it as a timely summons to resist attempts to create a world that leaves no room for God. “Devotion to the Sacred Heart, as it developed in Europe two centuries ago, under the impulse of the mystical experiences of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, was a response to Jansenist rigor, which ended up disregarding God’s infinite mercy... The men and women of the third millennium need the heart of Christ in order to know God and to know themselves; they need it to build the civilization of love”. (Catechesis, June 8, 1994).
Benedict XVI asked us to recognize in the heart of Christ an intimate and daily presence in our lives: "Every person needs a'centre'for his or her own life, a source of truth and goodness to draw upon in the events, situations and struggles of daily existence. All of us, when we pause in silence, need to feel not only the beating of our own heart, but deeper still, the beating of a trustworthy presence, perceptible with faith's senses and yet much more real: the presence of Christ, the heart of the world" (Angelus, June 1, 2008).
Devotion to Christ's heart is essential for our Christian life to the extent that it expresses our openness in faith and adoration to the mystery of the Lord's divine and human love. In this sense, we can once more affirm that the Sacred Heart is a synthesis of the Gospel. We need to remember that the visions or mystical showings related by certain saints who passionately encouraged devotion to Christ's heart are not something that the faithful are obliged to believe as if they were the word of God. Nonetheless, they are rich sources of encouragement and can prove greatly beneficial, even if no one needs to feel forced to follow them should they not prove helpful on his or her own spiritual journey. At the same time, however, we should be mindful that, as Pius XII pointed out, this devotion cannot be said "to owe its origin to private revelations".
The promotion of Eucharistic communion on the first Friday of each month, for example, sent a powerful message at a time when many people had stopped receiving communion because they were no longer confident of God's mercy and forgiveness and regarded communion as a kind of reward for the perfect. In the context of Jansenism, the spread of this practice proved immensely beneficial, since it led to a clearer realization that in the Eucharist the merciful and ever-present love of the heart of Christ invites us to union with him. It can also be said that this practice can prove similarly beneficial in our own time, for a different reason. Amid the frenetic pace of today's world and our obsession with free time, consumption and diversion, cell phones and social media, we forget to nourish our lives with the strength of the Eucharist.
While no one should feel obliged to spend an hour in adoration each Thursday, the practice ought surely to be recommended. When we carry it out with devotion, in union with many of our brothers and sisters and discover in the Eucharist the immense love of the heart of Christ, we "adore, together with the Church, the sign and manifestation of the divine love that went so far as to love, through the heart of the incarnate Word, the human race".
I would add that the heart of Christ also frees us from another kind of dualism found in communities and pastors excessively caught up in external activities, structural reforms that have little to do with the Gospel, obsessive reorganization plans, worldly projects, secular ways of thinking and mandatory programmes. The result is often a Christianity stripped of the tender consolations of faith, the joy of serving others, the fervour of personal commitment to mission, the beauty of knowing Christ and the profound gratitude born of the friendship he offers and the ultimate meaning he gives to our lives. This too is the expression of an illusory and disembodied otherworldliness.
Once we succumb to these attitudes, so widespread in our day, we tend to lose all desire to be cured of them. This leads me to propose to the whole Church renewed reflection on the love of Christ represented in his Sacred Heart. For there we find the whole Gospel, a synthesis of the truths of our faith, all that we adore and seek in faith, all that responds to our deepest needs.
As we contemplate the heart of Christ, the incarnate synthesis of the Gospel, we can, following the example of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, "place heartfelt trust not in ourselves but in the infinite mercy of a God who loves us unconditionally and has already given us everything in the cross of Jesus Christ". Therese was able to do this because she had discovered in the heart of Christ that God is love: "To me he has granted his infinite mercy, and through it I contemplate and adore the other divine perfections". That is why a popular prayer, directed like an arrow towards the heart of Christ, says simply: "Jesus, I trust in you" (St. Faustina Kowalska, Diary, February 22, 1931). No other words are needed.
St. Augustine opened the way to devotion to the Sacred Heart as the locus of our personal encounter with the Lord. For Augustine, Christ's wounded side is not only the source of grace and the sacraments, but also the symbol of our intimate union with Christ, the setting of an encounter of love. There we find the source of the most precious wisdom of all, which is knowledge of him. In effect, Augustine writes that John, the beloved disciple, reclining on Jesus' bosom at the Last Supper, drew near to the secret place of wisdom. Here we have no merely intellectual contemplation of an abstract theological truth. As St. Jerome explains, a person capable of contemplation "does not delight in the beauty of that stream of water, but drinks of the living water flowing from the side of the Lord".
St. Bernard takes up the symbolism of the pierced side of the Lord and understands it explicitly as a revelation and outpouring of all of the love of his heart. Through that wound, Christ opens his heart to us and enables us to appropriate the boundless mystery of his love and mercy: "I take from the bowels of the Lord what is lacking to me, for his bowels overflow with mercy through the holes through which they stream. Those who crucified him pierced his hands and feet, they pierced his side with a lance. And through those holes I can taste wild honey and oil from the rocks of flint, that is, I can taste and see that the Lord is good… A lance passed through his soul even to the region of his heart. No longer is he unable to take pity on my weakness. The wounds inflicted on his body have disclosed to us the secrets of his heart; they enable us to contemplate the great mystery of his compassion".
Gradually, the wounded side of Christ, as the abode of his love and the wellspring of the life of grace, began to be associated with his heart, especially in monastic life. A number of holy women, in recounting their experiences of encounter with Christ, have spoken of resting in the heart of the Lord as the source of life and interior peace. This was the case with Sts. Lutgarde and Mechtilde of Hackeborn, St. Angela of Foligno and Dame Julian of Norwich, to mention only a few.
St. Gertrude of Helfta, a Cistercian nun, tells of a time in prayer when she reclined her head on the heart of Christ and heard it beating. In a dialogue with St. John the Evangelist, she asked him why he had not described in his Gospel what he experienced when he did the same. Gertrude concludes that "the sweet sound of those heartbeats has been reserved for modern times, so that, hearing them, our aging and lukewarm world may be renewed in the love of God". Might we think that this is indeed a message for our own times, a summons to realize how our world has indeed "grown old", and needs to perceive anew the message of Christ's love? St. Gertrude and St. Mechtilde have been considered among "the most intimate confidants of the Sacred Heart".
Devotion to the heart of Christ slowly passed beyond the walls of the monasteries to enrich the spirituality of saintly teachers, preachers and founders of religious congregations, who then spread it to the farthest reaches of the earth. Particularly significant was the initiative taken by St. John Eudes, who, "after preaching with his confrères a fervent mission in Rennes, convinced the bishop of that diocese to approve the celebration of the feast of the Adorable Heart of our Lord Jesus Christ. This was the first time that such a feast was officially authorized in the Church. Following this, between the years 1670 and 1671, the bishops of Coutances, Evreux, Bayeux, Lisieux and Rouen authorized the celebration of the feast for their respective dioceses".
In modern times, mention should be made of the important contribution of St. Francis de Sales. Francis frequently contemplated Christ's open heart, which invites us to dwell therein, in a personal relationship of love that sheds light on the mysteries of his life. In his writings, the saintly Doctor of the Church opposes a rigorous morality and a legalistic piety by presenting the heart of Jesus as a summons to complete trust in the mysterious working of his grace. We see this expressed in his letter to St. Jane Francis de Chantal: "I am certain that we will remain no longer in ourselves but dwell forever in the Lord's wounded side, for apart from him not only can we do nothing, but even if we were able, we would lack the desire to do anything".
Under the salutary influence of this Salesian spirituality, the events of Paray-le-Monial took place at the end of the seventeenth century. St. Margaret Mary Alacoque reported a remarkable series of apparitions of Christ between the end of December 1673 and June of 1675. Fundamental to these was a declaration of love that stood out in the first apparition. Jesus said: "My divine Heart is so inflamed with love for men, and for you in particular, that, no longer able to contain in itself the flames of its ardent charity, it must pour them out through you and be manifested to them, in order to enrich them with its precious treasures which I now reveal to you".
St. Margaret Mary's account is powerful and deeply moving: "He revealed to me the wonders of his love and the inexplicable secrets of his Sacred Heart which he had hitherto kept hidden from me, until he opened it to me for the first time in such a striking and sensible manner that he left me no room for doubt". In subsequent appearances that consoling message was reiterated: "He revealed to me the ineffable wonders of his pure love and to what extremes it had led him to love mankind".
This powerful realization of the love of Jesus Christ bequeathed to us by St. Margaret Mary can spur us to greater union with him. We need not feel obliged to accept or appropriate every detail of her spiritual experience, in which, as often happens, God's intervention combines with human elements related to the individual's own desires, concerns and interior images. Such experiences must always be interpreted in the light of the Gospel and the rich spiritual tradition of the Church, even as we acknowledge the good they accomplish in many of our brothers and sisters. In this way, we can recognize the gifts of the Holy Spirit present in those experiences of faith and love.
More important than any individual detail is the core of the message handed on to us, which can be summed up in the words heard by St. Margaret Mary: "This is the heart that so loved human beings that it has spared nothing, even to emptying and consuming itself in order to show them its love".
When St. Claude de La Colombière learned of the experiences of St. Margaret Mary, he immediately undertook her defence and began to spread word of the apparitions. St. Claude played a special role in developing the understanding of devotion to the Sacred Heart and its meaning in the light of the Gospel. In a note of January 1677, after mentioning the assurance he felt regarding his mission, Claude continued: "I have come to know that God wanted me to serve him by obtaining the fulfilment of his desires regarding the devotion that he suggested to a person to whom he communicates in confidence, and for whose sake he has desired to make use of my weakness. I have already used it to help several persons".
At times, we may be tempted to consider this mystery of love as an admirable relic from the past, a fine spirituality suited to other times. Yet we need to remind ourselves constantly that, as a saintly missionary (St. Daniel Comboni), once said, "this divine heart, which let itself be pierced by an enemy's lance in order to pour forth through that sacred wound the sacraments by which the Church was formed, has never ceased to love". More recent saints, like St. Pius of Pietrelcina, St. Teresa of Calcutta and many others, have spoken with deep devotion of the heart of Christ.
Here I would also mention the experiences of St. Faustina Kowalska, who re-proposed devotion to the heart of Christ by greatly emphasizing the glorious life of the risen Lord and his divine mercy. Inspired by her experiences and the spiritual legacy of St. Józef Sebastian Pelczar (1842-1924), St. John Paul II intimately linked his reflections on divine mercy with devotion to the heart of Christ: "The Church seems in a singular way to profess the mercy of God and to venerate it when she directs herself to the heart of Christ. In fact, it is precisely this drawing close to Christ in the mystery of his heart which enables us to dwell on this point of the revelation of the merciful love of the Father, a revelation that constituted the central content of the messianic mission of the Son of Man" (Encyclical Letter Dives in Misericordia, November 30,1980, n. 13). St. John Paul also spoke of the Sacred Heart in very personal terms, acknowledging that, "it has spoken to me ever since my youth" (Catechesis, June 20, 1979).
The enduring relevance of devotion to the heart of Christ is especially evident in the work of evangelization and education carried out by the numerous male and female religious congregations whose origins were marked by this profoundly Christological devotion. Mentioning all of them by name would be an endless undertaking. Let us simply consider two examples taken at random: "The Founder [St. Daniel Comboni] discovered in the mystery of the heart of Jesus the source of strength for his missionary commitment". "Caught up as we are in the desires of the heart of Jesus, we want people to grow in dignity, as human beings and as children of God. Our starting point is the Gospel, with all that it demands from us of love, forgiveness and justice, and of solidarity with those who are poor and rejected by the world". So too, the many shrines worldwide that are consecrated to the heart of Christ continue to be an impressive source of renewal in prayer and spiritual fervour. To all those who in any way are associated with these spaces of faith and charity I send my paternal blessing.
The wound in Christ's side, the wellspring of living water, remains open in the risen body of the Saviour. The deep wound inflicted by the lance and the wounds of the crown of thorns that customarily appear in representations of the Sacred Heart are an inseparable part of this devotion, in which we contemplate the love of Christ who offered himself in sacrifice to the very end. The heart of the risen Lord preserves the signs of that complete self-surrender, which entailed intense sufferings for our sake. It is natural, then, that the faithful should wish to respond not only to this immense outpouring of love, but also to the suffering that the Lord chose to endure for the sake of that love.
It is fitting to recover one particular aspect of the spirituality that has accompanied devotion to the heart of Christ, namely, the interior desire to offer consolation to that heart. Here I will not discuss the practice of "reparation", which I deem better suited to the social dimension of this devotion to be discussed in the next chapter. I would like instead to concentrate on the desire often felt in the hearts of the faithful who lovingly contemplate the mystery of Christ's passion and experience it as a mystery which is not only recollected but becomes present to us by grace, or better, allows us to be mystically present at the moment of our redemption. If we truly love the Lord, how could we not desire to console him?
Pope Pius XI wished to ground this particular devotion in the realization that the mystery of our redemption by Christ's passion transcends, by God's grace, all boundaries of time and space. On the cross, Jesus offered himself for all sins, including those yet to be committed, including our own sins. In the same way, the acts we now offer for his consolation, also transcending time, touch his wounded heart. "If, because of our sins too, as yet in the future but already foreseen, the soul of Jesus became sorrowful unto death, it cannot be doubted that at the same time he derived some solace from our reparation, likewise foreseen, at the moment when 'there appeared to him an angel from heaven'( Lk 22:43), in order that his heart, oppressed with weariness and anguish, might find consolation. And so even now, in a wondrous yet true manner, we can and ought to console that Most Sacred Heart, which is continually wounded by the sins of thankless men" (Encyclical Letter Miserentissimus Redemptor, May 8, 1928).
I ask, then, that no one make light of the fervent devotion of the holy faithful people of God, which in its popular piety seeks to console Christ. I also encourage everyone to consider whether there might be greater reasonableness, truth and wisdom in certain demonstrations of love that seek to console the Lord than in the cold, distant, calculated and nominal acts of love that are at times practised by those who claim to possess a more reflective, sophisticated and mature faith.
In contemplating the heart of Christ and his self-surrender even to death, we ourselves find great consolation. Our sufferings are joined to the suffering of Christ on the cross. If we believe that grace can bridge every distance, this means that Christ by his sufferings united himself to the sufferings of his disciples in every time and place. In this way, whenever we endure suffering, we can also experience the interior consolation of knowing that Christ suffers with us. In seeking to console him, we will find ourselves consoled.
At some point, however, in our contemplation, we should likewise hear the urgent plea of the Lord: "Comfort, comfort my people!" (Is 40:1). As St. Paul tells us, God offers us consolation "so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction, with the consolation by which we ourselves are consoled by God" (2 Cor 1:4).
This then challenges us to seek a deeper understanding of the communitarian, social and missionary dimension of all authentic devotion to the heart of Christ. For even as Christ's heart leads us to the Father, it sends us forth to our brothers and sisters. In the fruits of service, fraternity and mission that the heart of Christ inspires in our lives, the will of the Father is fulfilled. In this way, we come full circle: "My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit" (Jn 15:8).
In the spiritual experiences of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, we encounter, along with an ardent declaration of love for Jesus Christ, a profoundly personal and challenging invitation to entrust our lives to the Lord. The knowledge that we are loved, and our complete confidence in that love, in no way lessens our desire to respond generously, despite our frailty and our many shortcomings.
Beginning with his second great apparition to St. Margaret Mary, Jesus spoke of the sadness he feels because his great love for humanity receives in exchange "nothing but ingratitude and indifference", "coldness and contempt". And this, he added, "is more grievous to me than all that I endured in my Passion".
Jesus spoke of his thirst for love and revealed that his heart is not indifferent to the way we respond to that thirst. In his words, "I thirst, but with a thirst so ardent to be loved by men in the Most Blessed Sacrament, that this thirst consumes me; and I have not encountered anyone who makes an effort, according to my desire, to quench my thirst, giving back a return for my love".
Jesus asks for love. Once the faithful heart realizes this, its spontaneous response is one of love, not a desire to multiply sacrifices or simply discharge a burdensome duty: "I received from my God excessive graces of his love, and I felt moved by the desire to respond to some of them and to respond with love for love" (St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, Autobiography). As my Predecessor Leo XIII pointed out, through the image of his Sacred Heart, the love of Christ "moves us to return love for love".
We need once more to take up the word of God and to realize, in doing so, that our best response to the love of Christ's heart is to love our brothers and sisters. There is no greater way for us to return love for love. The Scriptures make this patently clear:
"Just as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me" (Mt 25:40).
"For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself'" (Gal 5:14).
"Those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen" (1 Jn 4:20).
Love for our brothers and sisters is not simply the fruit of our own efforts; it demands the transformation of our selfish hearts. This realization gave rise to the oft-repeated prayer: "Jesus, make our hearts more like your own". St. Paul, for his part, urged his hearers to pray not for the strength to do good works, but "to have the same mind among you that was in Christ Jesus" (Phil 2:5).
By associating with the lowest ranks of society (cf. Mt 25:31-46), "Jesus brought the great novelty of recognizing the dignity of every person, especially those who were considered 'unworthy'. This new principle in human history – which emphasizes that individuals are even more 'worthy' of our respect and love when they are weak, scorned, or suffering, even to the point of losing the human 'figure' – has changed the face of the world. It has given life to institutions that take care of those who find themselves in disadvantaged conditions, such as abandoned infants, orphans, the elderly who are left without assistance, the mentally ill, people with incurable diseases or severe deformities, and those living on the streets".
In contemplating the pierced heart of the Lord, who "took our infirmities and bore our diseases" (Mt 8:17), we too are inspired to be more attentive to the sufferings and needs of others, and confirmed in our efforts to share in his work of liberation as instruments for the spread of his love. As we meditate on Christ's self-offering for the sake of all, we are naturally led to ask why we too should not be ready to give our lives for others: "We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and that we ought to lay down our lives for one another" ( 1 Jn 3:16).
Sisters and brothers, I propose that we develop this means of reparation, which is, in a word, to offer the heart of Christ a new possibility of spreading in this world the flames of his ardent and gracious love. While it remains true that reparation entails the desire to "render compensation for the injuries inflicted on uncreated Love, whether by negligence or grave offense", the most fitting way to do this is for our love to offer the Lord a possibility of spreading, in amends for all those occasions when his love has been rejected or refused. This involves more than simply the "consolation" of Christ of which we spoke in the previous chapter; it finds expression in acts of fraternal love by which we heal the wounds of the Church and of the world. In this way, we offer the healing power of the heart of Christ new ways of expressing itself.
The sacrifices and sufferings required by these acts of love of neighbor unite us to the passion of Christ. In this way, "by that mystic crucifixion of which the Apostle speaks, we shall receive the abundant fruits of its propitiation and expiation, for ourselves and for others". Christ alone saves us by his offering on the cross; he alone redeems us, for "there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all" (1 Tim 2:5-6). The reparation that we offer is a freely accepted participation in his redeeming love and his one sacrifice. We thus complete in our flesh "what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church" (Col 1:24); and Christ himself prolongs through us the effects of his complete and loving self-oblation.
Often, our sufferings have to do with our own wounded ego. The humility of the heart of Christ points us towards the path of abasement. God chose to come to us in condescension and littleness. The Old Testament had already shown us, with a variety of metaphors, a God who enters into the heart of history and allows himself to be rejected by his people. Christ's love was shown amid the daily life of his people, begging, as it were, for a response, as if asking permission to manifest his glory. Yet, perhaps only once did the Lord Jesus refer to his own heart, in his own words. And he stresses this sole feature: 'gentleness and lowliness', as if to say that only in this way does he wish to win us to himself. When he said, "Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart" (Mt 11:29), he showed us that "to make himself known, he needs our littleness, our self-abasement".
In what we have said, it is important to note several inseparable aspects. Acts of love of neighbor, with the renunciation, self-denial, suffering and effort that they entail, can only be such when they are nourished by Christ's own love. He enables us to love as he loved, and in this way he loves and serves others through us.
He humbles himself to show his love through our actions, yet even in our slightest works of mercy, his heart is glorified and displays all its grandeur. Once our hearts welcome the love of Christ in complete trust, and enable its fire to spread in our lives, we become capable of loving others as Christ did, in humility and closeness to all. In this way, Christ satisfies his thirst and gloriously spreads the flames of his ardent and gracious love in us and through us. How can we fail to see the magnificent harmony present in all this?
Finally, in order to appreciate this devotion in all of its richness, it is necessary to add, in the light of what we have said about its Trinitarian dimension, that the reparation made by Christ in his humanity is offered to the Father through the working of the Holy Spirit in each of us. Consequently, the reparation we offer to the heart of Christ is directed ultimately to the Father, who is pleased to see us united to Christ whenever we offer ourselves through him, with him and in him.
What kind of worship would we give to Christ if we were to rest content with an individual relationship with him and show no interest in relieving the sufferings of others or helping them to live a better life? Would it please the heart that so loved us if we were to bask in a private religious experience while ignoring its implications for the society in which we live?
Let us be honest and accept the word of God in its fullness. On the other hand, our work as Christians for the betterment of society should not obscure its religious inspiration, for that, in the end, would be to seek less for our brothers and sisters than what God desires to give them. For this reason, we should conclude this chapter by recalling the missionary dimension of our love for the heart of Christ.
Mission, as a radiation of the love of the heart of Christ, requires missionaries who are themselves in love and who, enthralled by Christ, feel bound to share this love that has changed their lives. To be able to speak of Christ, by witness or by word, in such a way that others seek to love him, is the greatest desire of every missionary of souls.
Christ asks you never to be ashamed to tell others, with all due discretion and respect, about your friendship with him. He asks that you dare to tell others how good and beautiful it is that you found him. "Everyone who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven" (Mt 10:32). For a heart that loves, this is not a duty but an irrepressible need: "Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel!" (1 Cor 9:16). "Within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot" (Jer 20:9).
In a world where everything is bought and sold, people's sense of their worth appears increasingly to depend on what they can accumulate with the power of money. We are constantly being pushed to keep buying, consuming and distracting ourselves, held captive to a demeaning system that prevents us from looking beyond our immediate and petty needs.
The love of Christ has no place in this perverse mechanism, yet only that love can set us free from a mad pursuit that no longer has room for a gratuitous love. Christ's love can give a heart to our world and revive love wherever we think that the ability to love has been definitively lost.
I ask our Lord Jesus Christ to grant that his Sacred Heart may continue to pour forth the streams of living water that can heal the hurt we have caused, strengthen our ability to love and serve others, and inspire us to journey together towards a just, solidary and fraternal world. Until that day when we will rejoice in celebrating together the banquet of the heavenly kingdom in the presence of the risen Lord, who harmonizes all our differences in the light that radiates perpetually from his open heart. May he be blessed forever.
Pope Francis
Subscribe