The Face of Mercy / Daniel Conway

Our hearts can be transformed by the love of Jesus

(En Espanol)
 

“What we contemplate and adore is the whole Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, represented by an image that accentuates his heart” (“Dilexit Nos,” #48).

Pope Francis’s new encyclical, “ ‘Dilexit nos’ [‘He loved us’]: on the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ,” is a sustained meditation on the love of God incarnate. The image that the Holy Father uses is the ancient symbol of the human heart, which stands for what is most human in us, and what is most like God.

“It is essential to realize that our relationship to the person of Jesus Christ is one of friendship and adoration,” the pope says, “drawn by the love represented under the image of his heart” (#49). We adore the Sacred Heart of Jesus, “the same Christ who loved us to the very end, opening wide his arms on the cross, who then rose from the dead and now lives among us in glory” (#51).

Throughout “Dilexit Nos,” Pope Francis draws on the words and example of saints and spiritual writers who were known for their devotion to the Sacred Heart. “The venerable image portraying Christ holding out his loving heart also shows him looking directly at us, inviting us to encounter, dialogue and trust,” the pope teaches. This image of the Sacred Heart also “shows his strong hands capable of supporting us and his lips that speak personally to each of us” (#54).

St. Augustine, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Francis de Sales and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque are just a few of the holy women and men who have testified to the power of God’s love manifested in and through the holy heart of Jesus. “The image of the heart should lead us to contemplate Christ in all the beauty and richness of his humanity and divinity” (#55), the pope says, making the case for the heart as the place where God and humankind are united.

“Standing before the image, we stand before Christ, and in his presence, love pauses, contemplates mystery, and enjoys it in silence” (#57).

Human persons are made in the image and likeness of God, who is love. It’s only right that the deepest, most powerful image of God is one that shows how our hardened hearts are transformed by the holy heart of God’s only Son. “The deepest part of us, created for love, will fulfill God’s plan only if we learn to love,” Pope Francis teaches. “And the heart is the symbol of that love” (#59).

The mystery of the Incarnation unites divinity and humanity in powerful ways.

“In gazing upon the Lord’s heart,” Pope Francis says, “we contemplate a physical reality, his human flesh, which enables him to possess genuine human emotions and feelings, like ourselves, albeit fully transformed by his divine love” (#60).

The emotions expressed by Jesus are human but not distorted by sin. His ego never interferes with his feelings or his actions. Christ assumed all that is part of our human nature, so everything about us (mind, heart and body) might be sanctified (#62).

The image of the Sacred Heart means far more than a pious devotion. It is a way of seeing what is most important in ourselves as people made in God’s image. As Pope Francis teaches:

In contemplating Christ’s heart, we also see how, in his fine and noble sentiments, his kindness and gentleness and his signs of genuine human affection, the deeper truth of his infinite divine love is revealed. In the words of Benedict  XVI, “from the infinite horizon of his love, God wished to enter into the limits of human history and the human condition. He took on a body and a heart. Thus, we can contemplate and encounter the infinite in the finite, the invisible and ineffable mystery in the human heart of Jesus the Nazarene” (#64).

In Jesus, we see the face of God, and in his Sacred Heart we connect with God’s incomparable love and mercy. The mystery of who we are, and how we are expected to live, is revealed in the holy heart of Jesus. “It is precisely in his human love, and not apart from it, that we encounter his divine love: we discover the infinite in the finite” (#67).

God loves us and we see this love most intimately expressed in the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
 

(Daniel Conway is a member of The Criterion’s editorial committee.) †