The Vatican has published today, October 24, the new encyclical of the Holy Father entitled: “Dilexit Nos”. A document composed of 5 chapters in which the Pope invites us to renew our devotion to the Sacred Heart and to reflect on the need to “put heart” in a world marked by coldness.
In a society that sees “various forms of religiosity multiplying without reference to a personal relationship with a God of love”, while Christianity often forgets “the tenderness of faith, the joy of dedication to service, the fervor of the person-to-person mission”, the Pope proposes a new deepening in the love of Christ represented in his Sacred Heart where “we can find the whole Gospel”.
“The importance of returning to the heart”
The Pope explains why it is necessary to “return to the heart” in a world in which we are tempted to “become insatiable consumerists and slaves to the gears of a marketplace.” He does so by analyzing what we mean by “heart”: the Bible speaks of it as a core “which is behind all appearances”, a place where “no matter what is shown on the outside or hidden, there we are ourselves”. The questions that matter lead to the heart: what meaning I want my life, my choices or my actions to have, who I am before God.
For the Pontiff, it is necessary to recognize that “I am my heart, because it is what distinguishes me, configures me in my spiritual identity and puts me in communion with others”.
Saints “in love” with the Sacred Heart
In the document the Holy Father mentions some saints who have meditated on the Heart of Jesus throughout the history of the Church, such as St. Claude de la Colombiere, St. Therese of Jesus, St. John of the Cross, St. Augustine, St. Francis de Sales, St. Charles de Foucauld and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. This year marks the 350th anniversary of the first revelation of the Sacred Heart to this nun.
The visions of some saints particularly devoted to the Heart of Christ, says the Pope, “are beautiful stimuli that can motivate and do much good,” but “they are not something that believers are obliged to believe as if they were the Word of God.” Thus, the Pope recalls that “devotion to the Heart of Christ is essential to our Christian life, insofar as it signifies the full openness of faith and adoration to the mystery of the Lord’s divine and human love, to the point that we can once again affirm that the Sacred Heart is a synthesis of the Gospel.”
Missionaries of Divine Love
The Heart of Christ, in “leading us to the Father, sends us to our brothers and sisters”. In fact, love for our brothers and sisters is the “greatest gesture we can offer Him in exchange for love”. Looking at the history of spirituality, the Pontiff recalls and gives as an example the missionary commitment of St. Charles de Foucauld, which made him a “universal brother”: “allowing himself to be shaped by the Heart of Christ, he wanted to welcome into his fraternal heart the whole of humanity, suffering for the sake of his brothers and sisters”.
The Pope also speaks of “reparation”, as St. John Paul II explained: “by offering ourselves together to the Heart of Christ, ‘on the ruins accumulated by hatred and violence, may the longed-for civilization of love, the kingdom of the Heart of Christ, be built’”.
