“Although one speaks abundantly, it is the heart that speaks to the heart; the tongue reaches only the ears.” Thus wrote St. Francis of Sales to the Archbishop of Bourges about preaching. From this teaching we can also wish to better penetrate the mystery celebrated on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Heb 1:1-2a). Along the same lines, analogously, we can say that in these “last days”, God wanted to speak to us through the Heart of Jesus.
The Old Testament already speaks of the “heart” of God (see, for example, the beautiful chapter 11 of the prophet Hosea) to refer to God’s love for humanity. In the Word made flesh, God really takes for Himself a human heart, with which He loves every man and woman with a love that goes beyond death itself. On the Cross, Jesus had already breathed His last when the lance pierced His side, causing blood and water to spurt forth. Victorious over death, His most Sacred Heart never ceased to beat with love for us.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is rooted in the paschal mystery; it is, rather, “a compendium of the whole mystery of our redemption. But “only gradually did this heart came to be the object of special cult, as the image of the human and divine love of the Incarnate Word.”
One of the greatest promoters of the cult to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was the 17th century French mystic Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. In one of her mystical visions, Jesus made her take the place of the beloved disciple at the Last Supper, saying to her: “My divine Heart is so much in love with men that, unable to contain within itself the flames of its ardent charity, it must spread them”. To this end, Jesus asked her to work for the establishment of a special feast to honor His heart, to be celebrated on the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi. In the 19th century, the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus became universal for the entire Catholic Church.
It is not a sentimental devotion, but the living of an integral spirituality, of a relationship with God that does not exclude feelings and affections, neither on His part nor on ours. We are called to (re)discover God’s tender love for us and to love Him with all our heart.
In this sense, it is a very useful and beautiful exercise to read, in prayer, the pages of the Gospel, trying to intuit what is happening in the heart of Jesus. In the passage read on the day of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart this year, for example, Jesus says: “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”. Immersing into these words we find a heart full of compassion, attentive, solicitous heart. A heart that knows the burden that weighs on us, a burden that often distresses us, oppresses us, tires us. A heart where we can rest in the certainty of feeling welcomed as we are and a heart which helps us in our difficulties. A heart that desires our heart, that seeks it tirelessly.
The solemnity of the Sacred Heart is an invitation to enter into the unfathomable mystery of God’s love and to let ourselves also be set on fire from that “burning furnace”. In that relationship, heart to heart, we have everything.