Pope Francis is full of surprises, and the latest is his encyclical on that sometimes unfashionable aspect of Catholic devotion, the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In it he declares: “Devotion to Christ’s heart is essential for our Christian life to the extent that it expresses our openness in faith and adoration to the mystery of the Lord’s divine and human love.” But he also acknowledges that representations of the Sacred Heart might strike us “as tasteless and not particularly conducive to affection or prayer. Yet this is of little importance, since they are only invitations to prayer…”
This is certainly a problem for many contemporary Catholics for whom the overt emotional charge of this Baroque image can be difficult to handle. In Ireland in particular, where marriage was once described as “a contract between a man, a woman and a picture of the Sacred Heart”, the once ubiquitous image is associated with an age of piety that is passed. Religious imagery responds to its age, but the abandonment of those pictures is a loss.
For the Pope is right to say that “The Christ we see depicted with a pierced and burning heart” is “the same Christ who, for love of us, was born in Bethlehem, passed through Galilee healing the sick, embracing sinners and showing mercy”. He quotes St John Henry Newman, who “encountered the living heart of Jesus” in the Eucharist and prayed “O most Sacred, most loving Heart of Jesus, Thou art concealed in the Holy Eucharist, and Thou beatest for us still…”. We should not be embarrassed by the affective piety of the image; it is powerful because it expresses a truth, that Christ loves us. It may be time to resurrect the emotional hymns to the Sacred Heart – “Sweet Heart of Jesus”, for one – which allow us to express that sentimentality that is an important element of Catholic piety. Or at least, we might recite that simple prayer: “Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my hope in you.”
<strong><strong>This article appears in the November 2024 edition of the <em>Catholic Herald</em>. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent, high-calibre, counter-cultural and orthodox Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/subscribe/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">HERE</mark></a></strong></strong>.
