The Object of Devotion to the Sacred Heart (2)

The Virtues of Jesus

To honor the charity of the Man-God is also to honor all of His virtues, since charity is the virtue that encompasses, summarizes, and finalizes all the others. It is the “form of all virtues.” This is why the litanies invoke the Sacred Heart as the “abyss of all virtues.”

This aspect was particularly developed by Fr. La Colombière, confessor of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, in his Meditations on the Passion, which are in fact meditations on the Sacred Heart. Each of them targets one of the virtues manifested by Christ in His Passion: On the penance [1] of the suffering Jesus, On the Charity of the suffering Jesus, and likewise for His patience, His self-denial, His contempt for the world, and His zeal.

“To learn this lesson,” he said, “let the Heart of Jesus be our school. Let us make our sojourn there during this Lent. Let us study its movements and try to conform ours to them.” This same Fr. La Colombière also begins his famous consecration to the Sacred Heart thusly:

“This offering is made to honor this divine Heart, seat of all virtues, source of all blessings, and retreat of all holy souls. The principal virtues that we claim to honor in Him are: firstly, a very ardent love of God, His Father, joined to a very profound respect and the greatest humility that ever was; secondly, an infinite patience, etc.; thirdly, a very sensitive compassion for our miseries, etc.”

The Heart of Jesus is therefore both the model and the source of Christian virtues which find their reason for being in charity: the model through the contemplation of the life of Jesus, and the source through communion.

The Sensitive Love of Jesus

Man being body and soul, his will – which is immaterial – is not his only affective faculty. It is profoundly linked to his sensitivity.

Our Lord, who is true man, had a sensitivity like ours, although perfect and without fault. He therefore felt a true love, as we see in the Gospel with Lazarus (where the Greek term used by St. John designates tender affection), with Mary Magdalene (the word used designates a calmer feeling), and with St. John himself.

Just as charity finalizes all virtues, so sensitive love is at the origin of all passions, all affections: it is a love that makes us desire, hate, shudder, rejoice, etc. Thus, devotion to the Sacred Heart introduces us into the intimacy of Jesus.

It goes without saying that the passions of Jesus, real as they may be, are entirely regulated and subject to His will. Better: they followed the command of His will; they were set in motion only on order. This is the reason why theologians, following St. Jerome, call them “pro-passions.”

From God’s point of view, these human passions are a weakness (without being a defect) voluntarily assumed by a divine person who is above all sensitive emotions. In this sense, they manifest God's incomprehensible love for us.

From the point of view of human nature, and to the extent that the passions of Christ are perfectly ordered, they are a treasure that Christians cannot tire of admiring, so it is true that nothing great is done without passion and that the work accomplished by Our Lord is the greatest of all. The passions of Our Lord are admirable because His sensitivity was the most delicate ever.

The Gospel shows us the passions of Jesus at work, and it is very beautiful to see the finesse and nuances with which the evangelists describe them. We have already spoken of His love. We see Him sad in the Garden of Olives, before the tomb of His friend Lazarus, facing Jerusalem, when He prophesies the ruin of the city that He cherishes, pious Jew that He was.

He leaps with joy when considering the reception of His gospel among simple souls. He trembles with anger in His violent indictment of the Pharisees and when He chases the moneychangers from the temple. He is disgusted by the malice of men during His agony. He plays with audacity in many verbal duels with the same Pharisees. He knew terror in the face of death, to the point of sweating blood.

Jesus’ passions are inseparable from His virtues, about which we spoke above. The passions are of the order of sensitivity, while the virtues depend most especially on the will. The role of the latter is to order the former. If the passions of Christ are perfectly ordered, it is because His virtues were themselves perfect.

The Sacred Heart is therefore the reflection and summary of the rich human nature of Jesus, just as, when we say of someone that he has a heart, we praise the richness of his personality summed up in the generosity of his love.

Eternal Love of the Son

The human nature of Jesus is the gateway to His divinity. “He who sees me sees the Father,” He says to Philip. The contemplation of the human love contained in the Heart of Jesus, “a burning furnace of charity,” allows us to approach the eternal and infinite love of the Son of God, a love common to the three persons of the Trinity.

This is what the Christmas preface sings: “for through the Mystery of the Word made flesh, new radiance from Thy glory hath so shone on the eye of the soul that the recognition of our God made visible draweth us to love what is invisible.” 

To paraphrase a classic expression, “the love that wept for Lazarus” leads us to “the love that created Lazarus.” Fr. Héris, commenting on the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas, addresses the question of the Sacred Heart and concludes thus:

“There is no less merit for a cult with a sensible form such as this to have led us to such heights, to the very summits of contemplation where our life in God must be completed and perfected. [2]” This love of God is God Himself, whose contemplation and possession will make us happy for eternity.

Is it necessary to specify that there is no opposition between the divine love and the human love of Jesus, whose “food is to do the will of [His] Father”? Many texts on the Sacred Heart can be understood in terms of His human nature and His divine nature, the first leading to the second.

It seems, however, that on one point the distinction deserves to be particularly emphasized: it is on the subject of mercy. Indeed, only God forgives sins. It is therefore according to His divine nature that Jesus has this power; His human nature is only the instrument of forgiveness (as we see when the human voice of Christ pronounces, effectively, “your sins are forgiven”).

This same human nature is above all what, in Jesus, implores mercy on behalf of sinners and merits their forgiveness (as we see when He says on the cross, "Father, forgive them"). This is important for a point that will be addressed later: that of reparation.

Towards Devotion in Action

The distinction between the three loves of the Sacred Heart is not ours. Pius XII clearly indicates this in the Encyclical Haurietis Aquas in Gaudio, already cited:

“Wherefore the heart of the Incarnate Word is rightly considered the chief index and symbol of the threefold love with which the Divine Redeemer continuously loves the Eternal Father and the Whole human race. It is  “the symbol of that divine love which He shares with the Father and the Holy Ghost, but which in Him alone, in the Word name that was made Flesh, is it manifested to us through His mortal human body.”

“It is moreover the symbol of that most ardent love which, infused into His soul, sanctifies the human will of Christ.”

“Finally, in a more direct and natural manner, it is a symbol also of sensible love, since the body of Jesus Christ, formed through the operation of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary, has a most perfect capacity for feeling and perception, much more than the bodies of all other men.” 

This distinction (which, let us remember, is not separation) between the three loves of Our Lord allows us to account for the great themes evoked by the tradition of the Church, the saints and the spiritual authors, and to order them, even if we should not see this order in too rigid a manner.

As the Sacred Heart symbolizes the love of charity of Our Lord, it is the model and the source of all the virtues; as it symbolizes sensitive love, it brings consolation to tired souls. As it manifests the uncreated divine love, it is the object of all desires, the inexhaustible fountain of mercy and the place of eternal rest.

On the other hand, if devotion to the Sacred Heart has as its object this triple love of God made man, it considers in a more attentive manner the two most unheard-of gifts of this love: that of Redemption through the cross (hence the representation of the suffering heart), and that of the Eucharist. This is what is clearly indicated in the great message transmitted by St. Margaret Mary:

"Here is this Heart which has loved men so much, that it has spared nothing to the point of exhausting and consuming itself to show them His love. And for recognition, I receive from most of them only ingratitude, by the contempt, irreverence, sacrileges, and coldness that they have for Me in this sacrament of love. But what is even more sensitive to Me is that these are hearts consecrated to Me who treat Me in this way.

“This is why I ask you that the first Friday after the octave of the Blessed Sacrament be dedicated to a special feast to honor My Heart, making reparation of honor to it by an honorable amends, receiving communion on that day to repair the indignities it received during the time it was exposed on the altars.”

The Eucharist and Calvary, the Holy Table, and Gethsemane, “the Cenacle and the Garden,” to use the expression of Fr. V-A Berto, in a word the Mass, as sacrifice and as food, this is where the incomprehensible love of our God “who so loved the world” is manifested more than at any other moment. 

This will allow us to better understand the acts of devotion to the Sacred Heart, especially those indicated at Paray-le-Monial and blessed by the Church.

[1] Subsequently, the Church deemed it preferable not to speak of the virtue of penance in Jesus, so as not to suggest that Jesus could have done penance for His own sins. 

[2] Revue des Jeunes, Le Verbe Incarné III, Renseignements techniques, Le sacré-Cœur.