“All of us need to rediscover the importance of the heart,” Pope Francis declares in his fourth encyclical, published on Oct. 24, that speaks about “the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ.” In it he calls on believers to rediscover devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and, through it, to love our brothers and sisters in the church and world.
“Dilexit Nos” (“He loved us”) is the title of this 28,000-word letter that speaks to the depths of Francis’ own relationship with Jesus.
“It is born of the spiritual experience of Pope Francis, who feels the drama of the enormous suffering caused by the wars and the many [forms of] violence that are now taking place,” Archbishop Bruno Forte of Chieti-Vasto, Italy, a well-known theologian, said as he presented the text at a Vatican press conference. “He wishes to be close to those who are suffering by proposing the message of divine love that comes to save us.”
[Top 5 takeaways from “Dilexit Nos,” Pope Francis’ new encyclical on the Sacred Heart]
Archbishop Forte said the encyclical offers “the key” to reading Francis’ two social encyclicals. The pope confirms this when he writes in “Dilexit Nos”: “The present document can help us see that the teaching of the social encyclicals ‘Laudato si’’ and ‘Fratelli Tutti’ is not unrelated to our encounter with the love of Jesus Christ. For it is by drinking of that same love that we become capable of forging bonds of fraternity, of recognizing the dignity of each human being, and of working together to care for our common home.”
Francis continues:
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.
Francis surprised Vatican observers by releasing the encyclical on the eve of the conclusion of the Synod on Synodality. It was perhaps no accident, as it contains an important message for synod delegates and bishops worldwide.
He reminds them, “The Church also needs that love, lest the love of Christ be replaced with outdated structures and concerns, excessive attachment to our own ideas and opinions, and fanaticism in any number of forms, which end up taking the place of the gratuitous love of God that liberates, enlivens, brings joy to the heart and builds communities.”
Rediscovering the heart
In the first of the five chapters of this spiritual treatise, Francis says that in this “age of superficiality” there is a need to “rediscover the importance of the heart.” He recalls how the Bible speaks of the heart as “the locus of sincerity, where deceit and disguise have no place. It usually indicates our true intentions, what we really think, believe and desire, the ‘secrets’ that we tell no one: in a word, the naked truth about ourselves.”
The Jesuit pope, who has often been described as possessing the charism of cardiognosis, or “knowledge of the heart,” writes:
It could be said that I am my heart, for my heart is what sets me apart, shapes my spiritual identity and puts me in communion with other people. The algorithms operating in the digital world show that our thoughts and will are much more “uniform” than we had previously thought. They are easily predictable and thus capable of being manipulated. That is not the case with the heart.”
Ever attentive to the real world, Pope Francis says that “when we witness the outbreak of new wars, with the complicity, tolerance or indifference of other countries, or petty power struggles over partisan interests, we may be tempted to conclude that our world is losing its heart.”
But, he adds:
We need only to see and listen to the elderly women—from both sides—who are at the mercy of these devastating conflicts. It is heart-breaking to see them mourning for their murdered grandchildren, or longing to die themselves after losing the homes where they spent their entire lives…. To see these elderly women weep, and not feel that this is something intolerable, is a sign of a world that has grown heartless.
Pope Francis reminds people that “it is only by starting from the heart that our communities will succeed in uniting and reconciling differing minds and wills, so that the Spirit can guide us in unity as brothers and sisters.”
The heart in history
In Chapter 2, the pope affirms that “the heart of Christ, as the symbol of the deepest and most personal source of his love for us, is the very core of the initial preaching of the Gospel.”
He recalls that “Christ showed the depth of his love for us not by lengthy explanations but by concrete actions.”
In Chapter 3, Francis explains that in the “devotion to the heart of Christ…[w]hat we contemplate and adore is the whole Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, represented by an image that accentuates his heart.”
He recalls that “universal human experience has made the image of the heart something unique. Indeed, throughout history and in different parts of the world, it has become a symbol of personal intimacy, affection, emotional attachment and capacity for love…. When two persons fall in love and draw close to one another, their hearts beat faster; when we are abandoned or deceived by someone we love, our hearts sink.”
[Give the Sacred Heart devotion a second chance]
“We must never forget that the image of the heart speaks to us of the flesh and of earthly realities,” Francis writes. “In this way, it points us to the God who wished to become one of us, a part of our history, and a companion on our earthly journey.”
He notes, however, that “love and the human heart do not always go together, since hatred, indifference and selfishness can also reign in our hearts.” But, he writes, “we cannot attain our fulfillment as human beings unless we open our hearts to others; only through love do we become fully ourselves.”
Even in today’s world, he writes, “[s]ince the heart continues to be seen in the popular mind as the affective center of each human being, it remains the best means of signifying the divine love of Christ, united forever and inseparably to his wholly human love.”
Francis recalls that “in numerous ways, Christ’s heart has always been present in the history of Christian spirituality.” He summarizes how this devotion is rooted in the Scriptures and has developed over centuries in the life of the church, including in the writings of numerous saints and recent popes.
He writes that St. 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” and “as a timely summons to resist attempts to create a world that leaves no room for God.”
Pope Francis says a case can be made today that “in place of Jansenism, we find ourselves before a powerful wave of secularization that seeks to build a world free of God. In our societies, we are also seeing a proliferation of varied forms of religiosity that have nothing to do with a personal relationship with the God of love, but are new manifestations of a disembodied spirituality.”
The pope calls for a “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.”
In Chapter 4, Francis recalls how this devotion “reappears in the spiritual journey of many saints, all quite different from each other; in every one of them, the devotion takes on new hues.” He mentions St. Bonaventure, St. Francis de Sales and several “holy women,” including Julian of Norwich and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, whose 350th anniversary is currently being celebrated.
Not surprisingly, Francis, the first Jesuit pope, devotes a whole section to the place of the Sacred Heart in the history of the Society of Jesus, from St. Ignatius Loyola to Pedro Arrupe.
St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises encourage people to “enter into the heart of Christ” to “enlarge our own hearts” and train them to “sense and savor” the Gospel message and “converse about it with the Lord,” the pope writes.
He recalls how St. Charles de Foucauld and St. Thérèse of Lisieux—to whom Francis is particularly devoted—“without intending to, reshaped certain aspects of devotion to the heart of Christ and thus helped us understand it in an even more evangelical spirit.”
A missionary heart
In the encyclical, Francis refers to aspects of the spirituality that has accompanied devotion to the Sacred Heart, including “the interior desire to offer consolation to that heart” and “the practice of ‘reparation.’”
In the final chapter, Francis emphasizes the communitarian, social and missionary dimension of any authentic devotion to the Heart of Christ, which, as it “leads us to the Father,” also “sends us forth to our brothers and sisters.”
In a significant passage, Pope Francis writes:
The Christian message is attractive when experienced and expressed in its totality: not simply as a refuge for pious thoughts or an occasion for impressive ceremonies. 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?
He then emphasizes “the missionary dimension of our love for the heart of Christ” and says, “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.”
“If we are concerned with helping others, this in no way means that we are turning away from Jesus,” the pope writes. “Rather, we are encountering him in another way.”
