He loved us
Opinion
The love of God expressed through the human heart of Jesus is the theme of Pope Francis’ latest encyclical Dilexit Nos (He Loved Us).
Pope Francis begins by referring to the heart. Our understanding when we say ‘follow your heart or listen to your heart’ usually means to follow your feelings, but the heart is much more than feelings. It is ‘the inmost part of human beings; the centre of the body, but also the human soul and spirit’.
As we listen to our hearts we listen to the ‘silent voice of being’.
And in the openness to this voice ‘authentic bonding is possible’. The heart is our break with ‘fragmentation’ and ‘individualism’ and opens us up to God and to the other.
Pope Francis goes on to say: ‘The world can change, beginning from the heart’ and calls us to return to the heart, to our inner life in the heart and to ‘Christ, as the heart of the world.’ And so ‘the Sacred Heart is the unifying principle of all reality.’ And he speaks of our devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus encouraged by St Margaret Mary Alacoque and taught to many by the Sisters of St Joseph.
The love of God for us is expressed in and through the human heart of Jesus. In his heart, divine love is united to human love. This means that for us who believe in Christ, our love too, can share in divine love. Human love becomes the instrument, the means, the experience of God’s love. Loved by God, feeling his love deeply, empowers us to love others. Where there is love, there is God and God’s love. We become instruments of God’s love for others in our marriage and family life, in our community life and in our love of neighbour, especially the poor and needy.
Why is this so important? Because there’s always a temptation in our faith to be too spiritual. Pope Francis speaks of the temptation of ‘various forms of religiosity that have nothing to do with a personal relationship with the God of love, but are manifestations of a disembodied spirituality.’ He calls it ‘dualism’ where the world is divided into the good of the soul and the evil of the body. In this misdirected desire to be faithful we can become disconnected, divided, spiritual elitists and separate ourselves from others. The human love of Jesus is the source and power of our deeply human, close and tender love for all others. Christ’s love is for each of us and all of us, uniting our bodies and souls, hearts and minds.
Again, why is devotion to the Sacred Heart so important, as Pope Francis reminds us. We can be ‘excessively caught up in external activities, structural reforms that have little to do with the Gospel, obsessive reorganisation plans, worldly projects and secular ways’. He speaks of the whole Church renewed, not primarily in these outer ways but with ‘the love of Christ represented in his Sacred Heart.’ Put simply, love begins in the heart, changes the heart from which love flows to others and changes this world and gives sure hope for the next.
Pope Francis speaks of Saint Augustine and says that he ‘opened the way to devotion to the Sacred Heart as the locus of our personal encounter with the Lord’ and speaks of ‘Christ’s wounded side (as) not only the source of grace and the sacraments, but also the symbol of our intimate union with Christ’. After referring to Saint Benard, William of Saint-Thierry, Saint Bonaventure and Saint Frances de Sales, he returns to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque and her ‘remarkable series of apparitions of Christ from 1673 until 1675’and quotes from her. ‘He revealed to me the ineffable wonders of his pure love and to what extremes it had led him to love mankind.’
There are many more references in the encyclical to saints such as Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, but I think the best way to finish these reflections is to quote from the first words of Pope Francis to us in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelium Gaudium-The Joy of the Gospel when he said: ‘I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ.’
Fr Dean Marin is Vicar General of the Adelaide Archdiocese
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