The Sacred Heart of Jesus
Unpacking Its Devotion through Sacred Scripture
Fr. Azam Vianney Mansha, CJM - STL
The devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has a very long tradition. Throughout the history of the Church, there have been numerous spiritual authors who have written and preached much about this for the faithful to understand, live and witness to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
As we journey together to enrich ourselves with this great, long biblical tradition, let us begin by understanding the words sacred, devotion and heart with the help of Sacred Scripture.
Sacred
Sacredness is a giant theme in the Old Testament. For our study, let us take the following passage:
Then [God] said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5)5
The Hebrew word (דוֹשָׁ ק (kadosh actually gives us a clearer understanding about the words holy and sacred. Kadosh does not only stand for “respect” or “reverence,” but it goes beyond that to mean “to set apart.” To find its biblical root, let us see the following passage:
I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no god (Isaiah 45:5)
To state briefly, the Sacred Heart of Jesus means that the Heart of Jesus is set apart. We will find out later on in this talk why the Heart of Jesus is set apart. Now, we move on to the second word, devotion.
Devotion
This pious and spiritual activity finds its biblical roots in the Gospel of John 2:5 where Mary encouraged the servant “to turn towards Jesus.” For St. John Eudes, this action of Mary is known as a devotion. For him, a devotion is not a sentimental kind of practice nor an experience of ecstasy, but it is to obey the words of Jesus with one’s mind, heart and strength as the servant did in the Wedding Feast at Cana (John 2:6).
Putting together the two words sacred and devotion, we can come up with an understanding that a sacred devotion is a divine action in which a person is set apart to turn towards God with his /her full mind, heart and strength. Do we find this kind of activity in the Bible? Of course, YES! In the Jewish Prayer known as Shema (שמן ,(we find sacred and devotion together. Let us see this in the Book of Deuteronomy:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).
One thing that we can observe is that the central point of the Shema is LOVE, which in turn means that the Law of any prayer is to LOVE. It is no surprise then that throughout the faith journey of our ancestors, the prophets constantly reminded the Israelites to love God. Consider the following verse:
. . . this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people (Jeremiah 31:33).
God did not only write the Law of Love in our hearts, but He promised to give His own Heart because through sin and ignorance, the human heart has turned into stone. In order to understand how God has given us a heart of flesh, we need to go back to the Old Testament and look carefully at the passage from Prophet Ezekiel:
[God said], a new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26)
In order to understand the above passage, we need to once again open the pages of the Old Testament where we discover several important features or biblical meanings of the word heart.
Heart
The Bible tells us that the Lord will replace our stoney hearts with hearts of flesh where the Law of Love will be written. This metaphor or symbolic expression actually goes beyond our understanding about the physical heart. In Sacred Scripture, the heart stands for five things:
- Memory (Deuteronomy 6:4)11
- Intellect (Psalm 18:15)
- Free will (Luke 6:45)
- Seat of contemplation (Luke 2:19 & 51)
- Whole interior life of man (Song of Songs 8:6)
In short, the heart represents a complete person.
To conclude our definition or our brief journey learning about the biblical words sacred, devotion and heart, we can say that: The Sacred Heart of Jesus signifies that “Jesus has completely set apart Himself for us in order to help us turn towards God.”
How can we turn towards God? Jesus gave a simple yet profound principle to achieve this: Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls (Matthew 11:28-29).
First and foremost, we need to go to Jesus. As St. John Eudes said, “The Sacred Heart of Jesus is a furnace of burning love.” The expression used by St. John Eudes, “furnace of burning love,” actually stands for sacrificial love. Furthermore, St. John Eudes said that we receive this burning heart in our baptism, which invites us to abandon ourselves and surrender all our possessions at the feet of Jesus, allowing Him to establish Himself in us everyday. To continue this sacrificial love, Jesus gave this commandment to His disciples: [Jesus said] I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another (John 13:34).
In contemporary times, there are many definitions of love, but in relation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, i.e. sacrificial love, I am going to quote only two passages–one is from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians and the other is from a homily of St. Augustine.
While writing a letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul emphasized the importance of love. He also wrote what love is and what is not considered as love. He said: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).
When we turn from the teachings of St. Paul to those of St. Augustine, Doctor and Church Father, we discover how deeply-rooted his words are in the teachings of Jesus with regards to sacrificial love. Consider the following words of St. Augustine of Hippo: What does love look like? It has the hands to help others; it has the feet hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men (& women). This is what love looks like.
Finally, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the furnace of sacrificial love, is the source of all things. It strengthens our hands to serve the poor; it purifies our eyes to see the sorrows of others; and it leads our feet to guide our lost and weak sisters and brothers.
