Two years ago, the religious congregation I belong to, the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, formed a commission of sisters from four continents to explore the mystagogy of the heart—that is, the spiritual process of being introduced into the mystery of Christ’s love and his heart that beats for his people. With Pope Francis’ recent encyclical, “He Loved Us” (“Dilexit Nos”), on the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ, it seems that we were perceiving a more universal movement that the Spirit was stirring in the church!
We desired to start by listening to our own sisters’ journeys. Every sister was invited to respond to a survey, narrating her encounter with the heart of Jesus and her understanding of the heart in relation to our charism and to mission. Over 450 sisters from the 24 countries where we are present shared their responses. We are still only beginning to compile the data from these narrations, yet the patterns that are emerging are intriguing.
We found there is among us a diverse understanding of and relationship to the Sacred Heart that largely corresponds to the individual sister’s family upbringing. For those not raised in a family or culture with a strong devotion to the Sacred Heart, the devotion seems foreign. These sisters narrate a personal encounter with Christ, but do not name this as an encounter with his heart. In cultural and ecclesial contexts that have emphasized the devotion, our sisters more naturally connected the love of Christ with the symbol of his heart. Some share how the heart represents the total Christ, his desires, sentiments, will, etc.
The images that sisters associate with the heart of Jesus also provide great insight into their spiritual experience. Images vary from the traditional image of the Sacred Heart (both loved and rejected) to images of the crucified Christ with his side pierced and his arms open, and include images of the Good Shepherd, the Eucharist, and even the eyes of refugees in a refugee camp as they prayed in adoration.
When the name of our congregation was being determined in Rome in 1877, our foundresses were sure of one thing: The congregation had to be dedicated to the Sacred Heart. Today, among diverse levels of personal devotion and the forms this takes, we are still sure of one thing: The heart matters. That is, if the heart of Christ truly is central to the living of our charism—our “why” in the church and for the world—the greater good we can offer is a deeper reflection on the spiritual journey toward and within the heart of Christ.
We were very eager for the publication of “Dilexit Nos” and are encouraged that the pope would be moved to address the world’s need for heart at this precise time. I note three aspects of the encyclical with which our charism resonates and that therefore connect with the reflections offered by our sisters.
The reframing of the symbol of the heart according to contemporary anthropology. One of the stumbling blocks to the integrating potential of the heart of Jesus Christ is that for some it seems antiquated or sentimental. If the heart represents only sentimentality, then many would be right to recoil at such a devotion. The encyclical, however, illuminates our unity in the heart and moves away from any representation that would emphasize a fragmented reality of the human experience. Francis writes: “This profound core, present in every man and woman, is not that of the soul, but of the entire person in his or her unique psychosomatic identity. Everything finds its unity in the heart, which can be the dwelling-place of love in all its spiritual, psychic and even physical dimensions” (No. 21).
The clarification of the symbol resonates with the spirituality of our sisters, in particular with younger generations and those who have integrated the spiritual dimensions of the global East and South. In the heart of Christ, “what we contemplate and adore is the whole Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, represented by an image that accentuates his heart…the natural sign and symbol of his boundless love” (No. 48). The attraction to this “boundless love” and the transformations it leads to reverberate through the narrations of encounters with Christ in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola—a “heart to heart” dialogue with the Lord (No. 144)—in ministry, and in community.
The encyclical traces the development of the devotion to the heart of Jesus back to the Gospel itself. While some saints have received particular revelations about the Sacred Heart (which may be inspiring, but which the faithful are not obliged to believe), it matters that Francis notes that the roots of this devotion go even deeper: “We can once more affirm that the Sacred Heart is a synthesis of the Gospel” (No. 83). It is of particular interest to our congregation that the encyclical highlights the pierced heart of Christ as the embodiment of God’s love (No. 101). Our charism leads us to encounter the depths of God’s love in the broken realities in our world and in our lives where Christ is laboring—and longs to labor—for our salvation. Many of our sisters, especially those who have been formed with more of a charismatic emphasis on the healing of a wounded humanity, identify most particularly with the pierced heart of Christ, pouring out love to the end. It is the heart of the risen Christ that still bears the healed, open wound.
We are most animated by the place that reparation holds in this encyclical. Our congregation’s charism is that of eucharistic reparation, and we are continuously trying to articulate this more clearly and sincerely to ourselves and to others. In some contexts, “reparation” has been associated with a devotion that emphasizes works of penance and sacrifice to console the heart of Christ wounded by our sins. While there is a sincere spirituality in such an understanding that cannot be addressed here, it is nonetheless not the spirituality with which we identify charismatically. It was very encouraging to read that Pope Francis explicitly chose not to associate reparation with “the interior desire to offer consolation to that heart” but rather to the “social dimension” (No. 152). Our sisters describe the intimacy of Christ in the Spiritual Exercises, adoration and the celebration of the Eucharist and how this forms their way of seeing and being with others. I share a few of their words here:
“Twice I have experienced the feeling of being in the heart of Jesus: It is like being immersed in an infinite love where nothing can happen to you…. The heart of Jesus transforms me every day in the way I look at people, the way I look at the world, the injustices, and so on. There is still work to be done, but it transforms me more and more.”
“Accompanying the suffering of others, I have learned to be more human, more compassionate.”
“I have discovered the heart of Christ most in the missions where he has shown me his total gift of self for the poor.”
Reparation is our “response to the love of the heart of Jesus, which teaches us to love in turn” (No. 183), emphasizing the social dimension that “leads us to hope that every wound can be healed, however deep it may be” (No. 186).
Pope Francis clearly has great hopes that as a people we will be drawn into the heart of Christ and become more “heart” in our reality. As for our congregation, our efforts to explore the way to the Heart are similarly aimed not at renewing an exterior devotion but a renewed claim on who we are and how we are called to cooperate in God’s project. Among the many hopes that arise as this devotion broadens and deepens, a few stand out most strongly:
1. As the faithful, a deepening in this devotion to the Heart of Christ invites us into a richer, deeper interiority that leads to an incarnated exteriority. We want to become the love and integrated reality that we contemplate! (As this is the spiritual path of the Spiritual Exercises, it is no wonder that those of ignatian spirituality would resonate with this emphasis!)
2. In a polarized reality that effects our church, a richer understanding of the devotion and its theological and spiritual developments could be a factor in reconciling the common division between devotion and action. The emphasis of this devotion takes us deeper within our own psychosomatic, spiritual reality, places relationship with God and others as central to salvation, and emphasizes the social implications of a heart that responds to the love of the heart of Jesus.
3. Such a devotion will help us to become a discerning people, deepening and discerning the affect. In meditation on Christ’s heart, his person, his affects, his desires, his embrace of our suffering, his love poured out on the cross into which we are integrated in the Eucharist, how could our own affects and desires not be transformed and conformed to his?
Pope Francis’ encyclicals have drawn from and lead to this truth: What the world needs is heart—not sentimentality, but integration, presence and fortitude to stay in the tensions of our current reality. We must do this not out of intellectual convictions but because we have embraced the truth that “he loved us” (Rom 8:37). May the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus attract us, form us and draw forth our response of love.
