Just recently Pope Francis released the 4th encyclical of his pontificate, and it was on the subject of
the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In the encyclical the following points were made: The heart is the centre of
our being and identity, dignity and relationships; we need to look at Jesus as model of consistent love
through his own loving heart; that the reparation we are called to make is not only through works or
prayers but through conversion of our lives; and that our mission as a community becomes a matter
of love, we become missionaries who cannot help but transmit the love which changed their lives.
The Sacred Heart is above all a celebration of the love of God for his people, a visible sign of his
compassionate heart. In the gospel of the solemnity, taken from Matthew, we see that compassion in
action when Jesus calls to us in these words, “Come to me, all who labour and are burdened, and I will
give you rest.” This heart of Jesus wants nothing more than to embrace us in its care.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “The prayer of the Church venerates and honours the
Heart of Jesus just as it invokes his most holy name. It adores the incarnate Word and his Heart
which, out of love for men, he allowed to be pierced by our sins.” (CCC 2669)
The foundation for the Sacred Heart devotion began in early Christianity. Sacred Scripture,
particularly the New Testament, mentions the love of God many times, and the Church Fathers
discuss God’s love as well. In the eleventh century, Christians often meditated on the Five Wounds of
Jesus, and the specific devotion to the Sacred Heart came from this meditation. St. Gertrude the
Great, who had private revelations regarding the Sacred Heart, helped further the understanding of
Jesus’ Sacred Heart in the late 13th-century.
Several centuries later, in 1670, St. John Eudes celebrated the first Feast of the Sacred Heart. In
1673, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a French Visitation nun, received her own revelations, in which
Jesus explained His love for all people, even allowing St. Margaret to lay her head on His Heart, as He
had also allowed St. Gertrude to do. He asked that Catholics receive Holy Communion on the First
Fridays of the month and adore Him in the Holy Eucharist.
In 1675, Jesus told St. Margaret that He wanted an annual feast in honour of His Sacred Heart. In
1856, Blessed Pope Pius IX designated that the Feast of the Sacred Heart would be celebrated
universally on the Friday after the Corpus Christi octave each year.
As fascinating as the history of the Sacred Heart may be, we need to reflect on its future. How do we
as individuals and as a community live out that calling to compassionate love we see modelled in the
Sacred Heart? How do we honour the Sacred Heart of Jesus today? One of the practical ways in
which we do it is through establishing a Caritas forum, where we try and put love into action through
ministry to the poor and homeless, to migrants and refugees and caring for our common home, the
earth. Another way, possibly a more spiritual way, is through developing a devotion to the Sacred
Heart in our prayerlife. We need to move beyond the chocolate box pictures of the Sacred Heart to a
personal relationship with the love of Christ revealed to us in the scriptures.
