The Sisters Of the Visitation of Tyringham

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UNDERSTANDING DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS

A Primer For Beginners

by Sr. Bernadette Therese

November 2006

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Dear Friends of the Sacred Heart,

I have had a love affair with the human heart for 27 years. Before I started nursing school, I worked as a phlebotomist and part of my job description was to assist the pathologist with autopsies. During that first autopsy, when the doctor handed me a heart to place in the scale to weigh it, I was filled with wonder. This was the powerhouse of the human body, here, in my hand. That initial introduction has lingered in my memory all these years.

Soon after that experience, I began nursing school and the semester for cardiology was on my schedule. Every class was absolutely fascinating. I often forgot to take notes, I was so interested in the lectures. Couple this course of study with a clinical rotation in Intensive Care and a vocation in Cardiac Critical Care was born.

After having graduated and worked for three years in general nursing to strengthen my clinical skills, I transferred to the specialty of Critical Care, particularly focusing on patients who had had open-heart surgery. I could not work enough shifts or attend enough seminars or obtain enough certifications. The more I learned about the heart, the more I knew I needed to learn. The epitome of this cardiology focus for me was when I worked with heart and lung transplants. 

By the time I entered this Monastery I had spent almost half my life concentrating on the human heart, but I had spent all my life as a Roman Catholic. Having been reared in a post-Vatican II framework, I unknowingly missed many of the treasures that make up Catholic spirituality and devotion, most notably, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Even until I entered the Monastery, this paucity of what should be basic Catholic devotion was still present in my life. My introduction to Sacred Heart devotion came during that first summer when I came to live with the Sisters to test my vocation. It was June and the Sacred Heart Triduum was about to begin... The guest preacher spoke of love. He explained about "agape". For three nights he preached about love. It was very moving and I enjoyed listening very much. Still, I wondered, "When will he talk about the Sacred Heart?"

The struggle to integrate this new idea of the Sacred Heart of Jesus with my personal experience of the heart continued. As a wonderfully created pump that distributes essential life sustaining molecules of oxygen to every needy cell in the body, the heart to me was a marvel of anatomical and physiological perfection. Why, I ruminated, why did the Church insist on using this image as a means of bringing us closer to God?

I had always eschewed the romantic nonsense of hearts and flowers, cupids and love ballads as a way to express love. Valentines and indeed, any picture of the typical idealized heart as a means of symbolizing love repelled me. I would never have bought fabric, stationary, cards, pictures, or anything with hearts on them, so great was my disdain of this insipid symbol. In fact, when I first came here and learned the name of the Monastery was " Mount of the Two Hearts"-my initial reaction was "Oh ugh. Hearts." This seemingly irreconcilable dichotomy irritated and titillated me. What was I missing? Then the Church gave the faithful the gift of a Eucharistic year. Here at last was something I understood. So I thought. 

During this prayerful, powerful, grace-filled year, our whole Community sank deeply, deeply into the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. More and more I grew in understanding and appreciation of the sacrifice and gift that is the Eucharist. My faith in the True Presence deepened. The Church proclaimed, "The Eucharist is the Source and Summit of the Christian life." What more did I need? What more could I ask for? Jesus is understanding and sympathetic to those who seek the Truth with sincerity. He does not leave us forever searching blindly, bumping into walls and hurting ourselves so that we loose hope and give up the search. A meditation book that was given me when I entered held the key to open the padlock and knock down the barricade that kept me from understanding and entering into devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The book is entitled Divine Intimacy and the author is Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, O.C.D. It is written to complement the liturgical year and in it he dedicates a week of meditations to different aspects of Sacred Heart devotion. In the meditation called "The Sacred and the Eucharist", I read: "Devotion to the Sacred Heart should bring us to a life of intimate union with Jesus who, as we know, is truly present and living in the Eucharist. The two devotions-to the Sacred Heart and the Eucharist-are closely connected. They call upon one another and, we may even say, they require each other. The Sacred Heart explains the mystery of the love of Jesus by which He becomes bread in order to nourish us with His substance, while in the Eucharist we have the real presence of this same Heart, living in our midst. It is wonderful to contemplate the Heart of Jesus as the symbol of His infinite love, but it is even more wonderful to find Him always near us in the Sacrament of the altar." I was intrigued. The next sentence turned everything around for me. Fr. Gabriel goes on to write, "The Sacred Heart which we honor is not a dead person's heart which no longer palpitates, so that we have only the memory of him, but it is the Heart of a living person, of One who lives eternally."

Well, of course. Now I understood! Just a short time ago during our liturgical year, we had celebrated Easter-the Resurrection of the living Lord. How could I have failed to make the connection between the Heart of Jesus and the Living God? I did fail, but finally I was able to leave behind all the scientific and anatomical knowledge, understanding and images and advance beyond the physical world to the supernatural world.

In a previous meditation, Fr. Gabriel had written that "the Heart of Jesus is always living in the Eucharist to satisfy the hunger of all who long for Him..." Father reminded me that the Eucharist was the crowning "gift of the love of Jesus for men" and that the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the source and cause of all His gifts." From this then, I was able to see that the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus could also be called the Feast of Love! Once I came to this understanding, all the symbolic language and art that surrounds this devotion became more palatable. I realized that the figures of speech and artistic renderings are necessarily limited because our finite and imperfect intellects are incapable of expressing all the mystery of the Heart of Jesus. At last I understood that first Triduum of Masses when all the priest spoke about was "love". Now I realized that he was talking about the Sacred Heart of Jesus whenever he spoke of Love! Pope Leo XIII wrote in his Encyclical Annum Sacrum, "The Sacred Heart is the symbol and image of the infinite charity of Jesus Christ, the charity [love] which urges us to give Him love in return." Our own dear St. Margaret Mary is frequently quoted as saying that we should endeavor to "return love with love." 

Fr. Gabriel writes, "The object of devotion to the Sacred Heart is, properly speaking, the physical Heart of Jesus which is worthy of adoration, because it is part of His sacred humanity...However, the ultimate object of this devotion is the love of Jesus, the symbol of which is His Heart...Therefore the principle object of this devotion is the love of Jesus."

Our holy founder and Father, St. Francis de Sales had this to say: "Considering in prayer the open side of our Savior, and gazing upon His Heart, I seemed to see all our hearts around His, doing Him homage as the Sovereign King of Hearts." One more quote so often used when speaking of Jesus' Heart is a quote from Jesus Himself as He lamented to St. Margaret Mary when He revealed His Heart to her and said "Behold this Heart which has so loved men and which has received so little in return." How touching and how very, very sad that our dear Lord would find it necessary to complain how He is loved so little by us. We can make up to Him for all the neglect the world has shown in this regard and spread the word that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is returning to Him love for love. Saint after saint has sung the praises of the gentlest Heart of Jesus. They have always known the infinite value of this devotion. Who am I to disagree with the communion of saints?

This presentation was given at the Monastery of the Visitation of Tyringham, MA on Wednesday November 1, 2006

God be Praised