What the Sacred Heart Teaches a World Addicted to Emotion| National Catholic Register
COMMENTARY: Our fallen world talks about love, and its definitions are either incomplete or just plain wrong.
As we celebrate the beautiful and heartwarming Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, it’s worth remembering that this devotion can be misunderstood if we fail to clarify its true meaning.
We live in a culture of sentimentality. Essential words like “love” and “the heart” have been redefined or are enmeshed in a context foreign to the real meaning of such words.
Amid such confusion, the Sacred Heart risks being reduced to an odd image of a fallen culture obsessed with emotion. But taught well, it becomes not only an object of devotion but also a powerful resource in teaching (and reteaching) our society about love and the heart.
As the popular maxim goes, “in their door, out ours.” And so, the Sacred Heart can attract people since the devotion seems to resonate with today’s culture and, as they approach the burning furnace of divine love, we can respect their openness of heart and present a more mature understanding of love and the heart.
The world talks about love, but its definitions are either incomplete or just plain wrong. Our fallen world tells us that love is about our wants and desires. In this view, love is self-centered, euphoric, emotionally fulfilling, gleeful, subjectively satisfying, recreational, pleasurable, self-regarding, gratifying, entertaining, affable and fun.
The Lord Jesus teaches us something very different about love. The Lord, whose Sacred Heart burns with a love for us, tells us:
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:12-14).
St. John echoes our Lord Jesus. The apostle, who laid his head on the chest of the Lord in the Upper Room, tells us:
“We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us — and we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (1 John 3:16).
And St. Paul spells out what the oblation of love looks like, and his litany is very different from that of our fallen world:
“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 or resentful; 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).
Rather than being a buzzword for self-centeredness, love means putting the good of another before ourselves. Love is self-donation, not self-centeredness.
By emphasizing this truth about love through devotion to the Sacred Heart, we are able to introduce the true depth and breadth of authentic love to a world that desperately needs it and that greatly desires to give it.
The power of love is seen within the heart. In contemporary culture, however, the heart has become a tagline for our ego. “My heart” means “my self-will.” The heart is no longer seen as a place of strength, conviction and volitional action, but rather as a place of unfettered emotion, subjectivism and raw pleasure.
In such a context, the heart can be used to justify cruelty and all sorts of evil. The Sacred Heart is seen falsely as the triumph of my will. God takes my side, no matter what I do or say. The Sacred Heart becomes a mere projection of our own fallen heart and its sins.
The heart is our spiritual soul. It’s a place of transcendence, mystery and moral formation. The heart is where we encounter God and are taught, corrected and encouraged by him.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:
“The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place ‘to which I withdraw.’ The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: It is the place of covenant” (2563).
There is nothing more demanding, selfless, virile and convicting than the heart that is in union with God. The push that is inherent in the spiritual soul can love deeply and ascend to heights unimaginable by human minds when it cooperates with God and allows his grace to work.
It is this understanding of the heart that can be proposed again to our society in the context of the Sacred Heart of the Lord Jesus. By looking through the veil of the Lord’s heart, we can learn about the power and potential of our hearts when they’re in union with God and strengthened by his guidance.
By understanding love and the heart in a broader and more mature way, we can appreciate — and share with others — the selflessness and strength of the Sacred Heart of Our Lord, which is displayed in his invitation:
“Come to me, all you that 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. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).
Yes, this is an authentic expression of love. It’s a real display of the heart. There is no sentimentality here. There is strength and compassion, loyalty and companionship.
This is the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We need the witness of this heart and this love in our society today. And so, rather than turn the Sacred Heart into the emblem of a fallen age, we need to exalt the Sacred Heart and allow it to mold and shape our society in the ways of the heart and of true love.
