Today is the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and in this era of Eucharistic revival, it really should be one of our most important solemnities for ourselves and our families, a devotion that perfectly encapsulates the faith. First, the origin story.
Christians started the devotion to the Sacred Heart some time in the 1000’s as a devotion to one the five wounds of Jesus: his hands, his feet, his head, his shoulder, and his heart pierced by the lance of the Roman soldier. These devotions were extensions of the meditations on the Stations of the Cross which go back all the way to the 300’s at least.
Fast forward to the 1670’s and we have two figures in France who receive private revelations about this particular devotion. Fr. Jean Eudes was the first to create a Mass for the Sacred Heart as well as other devotions. He was drawn to the Sacred Heart because during his formation to the priesthood he was taught that it was important to foster a “personal relationship with Jesus.” That should sound familiar, and at a time when much of the Church was concerned about orthodoxy over and against Protestants, he was interested not just in having the right teaching – which is important – but even more so being in right relationship with the Lord, a relationship that could touch the heart.
The other figure contemporaneous with Fr. Eudes was St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, who in 1673 started to receive visions of Jesus who invited her to rest her head on his heart. In the following year, Jesus told her he wanted a special devotion to his “heart of flesh” and asked that Catholics attend Mass on the first Friday of every month and to observe a holy hour in honor of the heart of Jesus in the Eucharist. Then in 1675, Jesus told her He wanted a feast celebrated on the first Friday after Corpus Christi.
The devotion caught on after that but was not officially recognized by the French Church until 1765. It became a universal devotion in 1873 under Pope Pius IX (who beatified St. Margaret Mary), and then the great Pope Leo XIII urged all bishops all over the world to promote it in 1899 when he consecrated the entire world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
So why is it so important? Why is it a solemnity (the highest kind of feast day we have)? I’ll point out just two reasons.
First, every modern Eucharistic miracle that has involved scientific study, whether it’s the miracles of Buenos Aires, Argentina or Tixtla, Mexico, or Sokółka, Poland, they have all found that the miraculous blood and flesh from these transformed pieces of the Eucharist are from the heart. It is true to say that when we consume the sacred host, the Eucharist, we consume the whole body of Jesus. However, every single time He has chosen to reveal himself in a special way through a Eucharistic miracle He has chosen to do so with His heart. Not only that. In every single one of the scientifically studied Eucharistic miracles, the tissue and blood cells tell a story of a heart in distress, a suffering heart. But there’s more. In every single study, the heart tissue and blood cells observed were active at the time of observation. They were alive despite weeks, sometimes months after the original miracle happened.
So the first reason this solemnity is so important is that it reminds us that Jesus’ heart is alive and suffering today, just as the image suggests with the lance wound and the crown of thorns. At every Mass, we are not re-sacrificing Jesus, but we are participating in the one single event 2,000 years ago on Calvary, the event which extends beyond space and time. The repeatedly miraculous revelations of the Lord through the Eucharist have told us that the Jesus we receive at Mass is the Jesus who has suffered, the Jesus whose heart is pierced.
The second reason this is all so important is because the solemnity reminds us that our God is first and foremost a God of love. Religions throughout all of history have portrayed the divine in many different ways with all sorts of demands on humans. And within Christianity, there are so many images of Jesus and of the Father and the Spirit, some emphasizing God's other-ness. But the Church wants us to remember on this day that at the center of the entire revelation of God is this simple truth, articulated so well in John 3:16, that “God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life,” and in this passage from Luke 12:49, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!”
The devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus reminds us that all of salvation history boils down to the truth of the Lord’s deep desire to draw us close to his heart, to embrace us, to love us in an all-consuming love. He shows us his wounds not to remind us just how much it is that He loves us. He loves us so much that He’s willing to sacrifice himself for our sake – represented in the wounds on the image. But not just that. His is a burning love, radiating heat and light so that we might experience his love here and now in our daily lives. He wants us on fire with His love so that we can bring more hearts to His heart.
The Sacred Heart has been an image very dear to me. For me, it is the image that encapsulates how I view the central meaning of the faith. Friends, perhaps this summer, but especially this June, which is the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, consider taking up a devotion to the Sacred Heart.
Books on the devotion with suggested practices include but are not limited to:
Burke, Raymond Cardinal The Enthronement of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Gaitley, Michael Consoling the Heart of Jesus: A Do-It-Yourself Retreat-Inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. [ends with a consecration to the Sacred Heart]
Kubicki, SJ James Rediscovering Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus: A Heart on Fire
What are the books or videos that have helped you with devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus?
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