Doctrinal Foundation of Devotion to the Sacred Heart
John Hardon, S.J.
Most of us know that Devotion to the Sacred Heart is part of
our Catholic religion. We have known from childhood about
the nine first Fridays. We often recite the Litany of the
Sacred Heart. Annually we celebrate the solemn feast of the
Sacred Heart. I am sure that we know several aspirations,
like: "Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place my trust in thee."
Over the years, every time I pick up the telephone, before I
talk to whoever called, I make an aspiration to the Sacred
Heart. It helps; you never know who is on the other side.
There are pictures and statues of the Sacred Heart. I would
like to recommend that every home have at least a picture or
a statue of the Sacred Heart. Some of us, I dare say, have
memorized the twelve promises of the Sacred Heart. There is
the daily morning offering to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. All
of this belongs to the practice of the Catholic religion and
is part of the living out of the devotion to the Sacred
Heart. However, where devotion is part of Catholic piety,
the doctrine is part of our Catholic faith.
<Catholic Doctrine>
I would not hesitate to say that devotion to the Sacred
Heart is a synthesis of Catholic <doctrine>. One thing I
have learned from our ecumenical age is that we should be
very kind, understanding and gracious towards those that are
baptized but are not Catholic. However, we should also
understand that as Catholics we are distinctively Christian.
Indeed the Catholic Church is normative for the whole
Christian world.
I can say this with a certain amount of security. My father
died when I was about a year old. My mother took in boarders
to keep the two of us going. Our first two boarders were two
Protestants that stayed with us for years. When I was four
years old I complained to my mother; I thought they were my
sisters. "How come," I asked her, "my sisters do not abstain
from meat on Friday like we do?" So she took Judith and
Susan aside and said, "My boy is asking questions. Would you
ask your minister if you can abstain from meat on Fridays,
or I will have to ask you to leave." They abstained from
meat on Fridays. Over the years I have taught in six
Protestant divinity schools, and published three books on
Protestantism that have been used in Protestant seminaries.
I understand and, I think I can say, I love Protestants.
Although I also know that a Catholic is not a Protestant!
It is this stress that I would like to bring out in our
conversation. I believe that the devotion to the Sacred
Heart (on its doctrinal side) most clearly distinguishes
Catholicism from all other forms of Christianity; certainly
from the four thousand nominally Protestant denominations
throughout the world.
The historical origins of the devotion to the Sacred Heart
and its doctrine go back to the dawn of Christianity.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart was revealed to us by Jesus
when He told us, in the only direct mandate he gave, to
imitate Him, by telling us "Learn from me that I am meek and
humble of Heart." But the doctrinal foundation of the
Devotion to the Sacred Heart was revealed on Calvary when
the heart of Jesus was pierced by the soldier's lance and we
are told there flowed out blood and water.
For the next fifteen hundred years some of the Church's
greatest saints and mystics were specially devoted to the
Sacred Heart.
<Origins of the Modern Devotion>
As Timothy O'Donnell shows in the <Heart of the Redeemer>,
the devotion to the Heart of Jesus goes back to the Gospels
and remained unchallenged until the rise of Protestantism. I
usually refer to it as the "Protestant Revolution" in
contrast with the "Catholic Reformation." That is why St.
Ignatius founded the Society of Jesus, to provide the Church
with a Catholic reformation.
In the sixteenth century, the most drastic division in
Christian history occurred. Five nations that were Catholic
were lost to the Church and large parts of three other
countries. Division in Catholic unity came once the
doctrinal foundations of what we casually call devotion to
the Sacred Heart were undermined. Since then, not only has
there been a massively divided Christianity but also a
globally disunited humanity.
The restoration of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
is the only real hope we have of restoring unity within the
Catholic Church. And the hope of this unity lies in the
doctrinal foundations of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart.
What was the source of this division in Catholic unity and
consequent division in humanity? It was the rise of a chain
of errors about God, man, morality, spirituality and human
destiny. But there is one basic link in this chain of
errors. It is the false belief that we do not have a free
will with which we can lovingly respond to God's mysterious
and unfailing love for us.
What I am saying is worth repeating. The most fundamental
error that divided the Catholic Church in the sixteenth
century and has since been the most divisive element in the
Western world is the denial that we have true internal human
freedom by which we can either freely serve God or willingly
refuse to serve Him.
This error penetrated the Catholic Church through the heresy
known as Jansenism. It was named after the French Bishop
Cornelius Jansenius (1585-1638). At one time fifty dioceses
in France were administered by Jansenist bishops. It is
important to bring out the "seed bed" of the errors which
have divided the Catholic Church and Christianity for five
hundred years; and which have occasioned the rise of the
modern devotion to the Sacred Heart.
Among the champions of Catholic orthodoxy who fought against
Jansenism was St. Francis de Sales. At times he even risked
his own life. He was a bishop like Jansenius and explained,
"A bishop created the error; my duty as a bishop is to
correct this error by teaching the truth." The two
masterpieces of the writings of St. Francis de Sales are
<Introduction to the Devout Life> and his classic work <On
the Love of God>. Both of these works are indispensable for
a correct understanding of the meaning of true love.
In His providence, God had given the Church a St. Francis de
Sales who founded the Order of the Visitation, one of whose
members was St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. It was therefore not
coincidental that Christ revealed the mysteries of His
Sacred Heart in the Order of the Visitation whose founder
was the outstanding defender of God's universal love for the
human race.
In my forty-two years in the priesthood I have dealt with
many souls and have been involved in many problems. I
believe the hardest mystery we are called on to believe,
when everything is against it, is that God does love us. He
loves everyone! The men that I visit at the Queen of Peace
in Washington are dying of AIDS. Does God love them? Yes!
God loves everyone and He loves always. "Do you mean that
when I have problems God is really loving me?," one of the
men asked. I told him, "You've got your vocabulary wrong. In
the dictionary of the Holy Trinity the word 'problem' does
not occur. What we call problems are acts of God's loving
experience." I know how hard it can be to believe that God
loves us when we experience pain or have been rejected by
someone who is near and dear to us.
Margaret Mary was chosen by God to provide the Church and
through the Church all mankind with a deep and clear
understanding of God's love for us and the love we should
have for Him. In spite of the trial and tribulation,
including the reputation in her community for being out of
her mind, she never wavered in her loving trust in God.
Love is mainly proved by suffering. No wonder Margaret Mary
could ask in one of her letters, "What can keep us from
loving God and becoming saints, since we have a body that
can suffer and a heart that can love?" Margaret Mary became
the catalyst whose mission was to restore to the Catholic
Church what some had lost and to strengthen what was so
weakened _ the mystery of human freedom in responding to the
merciful love of God.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart can be pathetically cheapened
by treating it as just another devotion. On the contrary, it
contains in its doctrinal foundation what the popes have
reminded us are the seven cardinal mysteries of our Faith,
which the world denies but we accept. These seven cardinal
mysteries are:
_God created the human race out of love. He did not need to
create anything or anyone. Moreover, He elevated the human
race to a supernatural destiny, nothing less than the vision
of the Holy Trinity for all eternity. All of this not
because He had to, but only because He loves.
_God became man out of love for the sinful human race. He
became a mortal man to die to prove how much He loves us. He
assumed a human will that He might freely suffer. Do all
humans suffer? Yes. Do all humans suffer willingly? No. The
essence of love is to suffer willingly for the one you claim
to love. God became man to suffer with a human will.
_Christ, the Son of God who became the Son of Man, suffered
and died not just for the predestined elect, but for all
mankind.
_God gives everyone enough grace to be saved. Is everyone
saved? No. God wants all men to be saved yet gave us a free
will with which we can choose either to love Him or love
ourselves even to the contempt of God.
_We have a free will by which we can really choose to love
God. When we want what God wants then we are loving Him.
Love unites two wills: the will of God, by which He offers
us His grace; and our will, by which we correspond with the
graces we receive.
_We have a free will that can go beyond the call of duty. We
can do more than just cooperate with God's grace to avoid
sin. We can also love God more than we have to . . . more
than we must. Read the letters of St. Margaret Mary. After
twenty pages you will have to brace yourself. This loving
God more than we have to means loving the cross. Christ
joyfully chose the cross, and invites us to do the same, out
of love for Him.
_We believe that Jesus Christ gave us Himself in the Holy
Eucharist, by which He remains now on earth, in the fullness
of his humanity and with his living human Heart. In every
Mass, He freely offers Himself to his heavenly Father, and
through the Mass confers the graces He won for us on the
cross. In Holy Communion, we receive Him with his Heart into
our own hearts, to sustain our selfless love of Him by our
enduring love for everyone whom He places into our lives.
Lord Jesus, we believe you are our God who became man so
that you might have a human heart, so that you might evoke
in our hearts a corresponding love for you. Strengthen our
weakness and protect us from ever running away from the
cross. Help us to love you here in this valley of tears by
faith, so that we can continue loving you in that
everlasting embrace for which we were made.
<Rev. John Hardon, S.J.> received a doctorate in theology
from the Gregorian University in Rome. He currently teaches
at the Notre Dame Catechetical Institute in Virginia. Father
Hardon also serves as the Vice President for the Institute
on Religious Life and the Chairman of the Catholic Voice of
America.
This article was taken from the Summer 1990 issue of "Faith & Reason".
Subscriptions available from Christendom Press, 2101 Shenandoah Shores Road,
Ft. Royal, VA 22630, 703-636-2900, Fax 703-636-1655. Published quarterly at
$20.00 per year.
Copyright (c) 1996 EWTN
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