INTRODUCTION
The Heart of Jesus is fully divine and also fully human. As a fully human Heart, It feels intensely—grief, joy, desire, aversion, even anger and fear. In His Heart, all these emotions reveal the fullness of divine Love, or, in the words of Pope Francis, they become sacraments of divine love. As we explore that love more deeply and discover its true magnitude, it becomes obvious that we cannot repay His love other than by giving 100% of our love in exchange for 100% of His love. Furthermore, as we behold the suffering that He endures for us, our pious desire to console the Heart of Jesus helps us realize that it is only by letting ourselves be loved that we bring consolation to the most painful suffering of the Heart of Jesus. Then we can enter into the wellspring of the love of His Heart especially by fully receiving the Sacraments—living out our Baptism and receiving deeply from the Eucharist. Having beheld, loved and received from the wellspring of sweet love from the Heart of Jesus, we are moved to love others as He has loved us. Indeed, as we receive more of His love, our hearts are transformed to become more united with the Heart of Jesus. This is true even to the extent that we can truly love with His Heart. We deepen our intimacy by sharing His suffering, which is also necessarily the suffering of others. And we bring His love to the suffering of others in this mystical way. Finally, we repair the offenses against His Heart by entering into suffering and sharing His Heart with those whose suffering we share. Throughout this week, we will offer some simple prayers from saints and from the liturgical celebration of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus along with a Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. On the last day of this week, we will make a special initial consecration through St. Thérèse’s Act of Oblation to Merciful Love. And then we are ready to make our consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Hearts of Joseph and Mary.
Day 27: Human Emotions as Sacraments of Divine Love
READING 1
Hosea 11:8-9
How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel! How can I make you like Admah! How can I treat you like Zeboiim! My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come to destroy.
READING 2
From the Encyclical Dilexit Nos x 60-62 by Pope Francis
The eternal Son of God, in his utter transcendence, chose to love each of us with a human heart. His human emotions became the sacrament of that infinite and endless love. His heart, then, is not merely a symbol for some disembodied spiritual truth. In gazing upon the Lord’s heart, 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. Our devotion must ascend to the infinite love of the Person of the Son of God, yet we need to keep in mind that his divine love is inseparable from his human love. The image of his heart of flesh helps us to do precisely this.
Since the heart continues to be seen in the popular mind as the affective centre of each human being, it remains the best means of signifying the divine love of Christ, united forever and inseparably to his wholly human love. Pius XII observed that the Gospel, in referring to the love of Christ’s heart, speaks “not only of divine charity but also human affection.” Indeed, “the heart of Jesus Christ, hypostatically united to the divine Person of the Word, beyond doubt throbbed with love and every other tender affection.”[1]
The Fathers of the Church, opposing those who denied or downplayed the true humanity of Christ, insisted on the concrete and tangible reality of the Lord’s human affections. Saint Basil emphasized that the Lord’s incarnation was not something fanciful, and that “the Lord possessed our natural affections.”[2] Saint John Chrysostom pointed to an example: “Had he not possessed our nature, he would not have experienced sadness from time to time.”[3] Saint Ambrose stated that “in taking a soul, he took on the passions of the soul.”[4] For Saint Augustine, our human affections, which Christ assumed, are now open to the life of grace: “The Lord Jesus assumed these affections of our human weakness, as he did the flesh of our human weakness, not out of necessity, but consciously and freely… lest any who feel grief and sorrow amid the trials of life should think themselves separated from his grace.”[5] Finally, Saint John Damascene viewed the genuine affections shown by Christ in his humanity as proof that he assumed our nature in its entirety in order to redeem and transform it in its entirety: Christ, then, assumed all that is part of human nature, so that all might be sanctified.[6]
REFLECTION
The Heart of Jesus throbs with love for you. Although we are struck by the way Jesus navigates situations that would be terrifying for most of us, or seems to remain calm and collected in situations that would be extremely frustrating for us, we cannot infer a kind of stoicism from that. Human emotions are the body’s response to our perception of reality, namely the goodness and badness of what is really present. If Jesus seems calm in a terrifying situation, it is because He is present to a greater reality that relativizes the terror, for example, when He declared to Pilate: “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.” At the same time, He experiences the real goodness of God’s love breaking through when others are less aware, for example, when “he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will’” (Lk 10:21).
Jesus rejoices in you. He delights in you. He thanks the Father every time He sees the Father’s love breaking through and your heart becoming fully alive. He grieves with you, like with Martha and Mary. What we find in Jesus is the warmth and tenderness of a human heart that is fully alive and full of unconditional love for you.
Newman’s Prayer to the Sacred Heart (longer or shorter form)
One of the prayers from the Roman Missal
The Litany of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
[1]Haurietis Aquas $\S$ 41.
[2]Ep. 261, 3: PG 32, 972.
[3]In Io. homil. 63, 2: PG 59, 350.
[4]De fide ad Gratianum, II, 7, 56: PL 16, 594 (ed. 1880).
[5]Enarr. in Ps. 87, 3: PL 37, 1111.
[6]Cf. De fide orth. 3, 6, 20: PG 94, 1006, 1081.
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