On 24 October Pope Francis published his latest encyclical letter, “Dilexit nos”, which is widely subtitled “On the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ”. Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a central theme and it is opened up in an expansive and inclusive manner. The opening words of the encyclical – “He loved us” – a quotation from Romans 8 – sets the stage for an exploration of how we are loved by Christ, and how we are called to share this love with one another.
The first chapter of the letter is perhaps the least accessible and if you find it difficult or not to your taste I advise you just to keep going. Here Pope Francis explains what is meant by the human heart – obviously going beyond the biological and tracing the use of the concept from the ancient world, in Scripture, and through to modern philosophy. The heart is the place where Mary treasured and pondered the mysteries of Christ. It is the profound core of every human person.
Everything finds its unity in the heart, which can be the dwelling-place of love in all its spiritual, psychic and even physical dimensions. In a word, if love reigns in our heart, we become, in a complete and luminous way, the persons we are meant to be, for every human being is created above all else for love. In the deepest fibre of our being, we were made to love and to be loved. (Dilexit nos, paragraph 21)
This call to love and to be loved echoes throughout the whole document, and it is by changing our hearts through love that we will be able to perform the “social miracle” of building up in this world God’s kingdom of love and justice.
We are also reminded that “our hearts are frail and wounded, not self-sufficient,” and that the way forward is to depend on Christ himself, whose heart is “a blazing furnace of divine and human love”.
Pope Francis goes on to trace devotion to the heart of Jesus, going far beyond the revelations to St Margaret Mary Alacoque, (the saint who encouraged devotion to the Sacred Heart in the modern era), ranging from Saints Irenaeus and Augustine in the early church, through Jesuit spirituality, Saints Charles de Foucauld and Thérèse to St John Paul II at the turn of the twenty-first century. He shows that this devotion is not only, and even not principally, about a particular type of piety connected with a certain kind of artwork. It is about the love of Christ flowing out to us, as is seen in the blood and water flowing from the side of the wounded Christ on the cross, from the side of the One who cried out to us, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” (John 7:37).
Unsurprisingly, for Pope Francis, the theme of mission plays a prominent part in the last chapters of the letter. We are told not only that we can find consolation for our struggles in the heart of Jesus, but that we can mysteriously offer consolation to Him in His Passion. We hear how Jesus is asking for our love – and how, following the teaching of Matthew 25:40 “Just as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me”, we are able to meet that need by reaching out in love to one another, or in Pope Francis’ words “our best response to the love of Christ’s heart is to love our brothers and sisters”.
Of course an encyclical letter is written for everyone, not any particular group in the Church, but I wondered if it had any particular resonances for Benedictines. Saints Lutgard, Gertrude and St Mechtilde, who were nuns who followed the Rule of St Benedict, are mentioned as examples of holy women who described “resting in the heart of Christ” as the source of their life and as giving peace. But besides this, I have a card next to my computer which says ‘Listen with the ear of your heart’ … from the first sentence of the Rule of St Benedict. This encyclical, too, should speak to the heart of all Christians. It tells of the love of Christ for us, and calls us to spread that love throughout the world.
Sr Thérèse Murphy OSB
Artwork by Dame Werburg Welch OSB (1894-1990)