Christ's Heart as Reality and as Symbol
To trace in further
detail the meaning of the Heart of Christ, it is necessary to distinguish
between the reality and the symbol, between what the Heart is and what
it symbolizes or typifies. It is a symbol in a unique way; for the Heart
resembles the sacraments in this, that by being a symbol it is a cause. The
Heart as a symbol of love is a vastly higher symbol than the rainbow, the image
of God's forbearance (Gen. IX. 13.), for the Heart really causes what it stands
for, not only representing, but producing divine love in men. This is true
since the Heart is inseparable from the rest of His humanity, and His humanity
is inseparable from His divinity. This symbol is as unique as Christ Himself.
The Heart, considered
as a reality, as a created piece of flesh, recalls constantly to our minds the
reality of the human nature, the human soul and body in which He worked out the
salvation of all men. Devotion to the Heart is one great way of intensifying
our conviction of the fact that Christ really lived among men as a man (Phils.
II.7.), that He really suffered as a man, died as a man, and particularly that
He lives among us today in our own towns and villages as man—immortal, supreme,
but yet man.
As a symbol, His
Heart represents both His human love and His divine love for both God and men.
His Heart typifies all the ardour and intensity with which He loves His own
infinite perfection, and the infinite tenderness and compassion with which He
loves men. His Heart shows us the qualities of true love—the qualities of the
love with which He has loved us, the qualities of the love with which we should
love Him. His love is courageous, facing and fighting all obstacles;
steadfast, enduring in the struggle, never wearying, allowing no disgust,
routine or tedium to interfere with His ardour; tender, sensitive even
to the smallest thing that is done to Him—the least kindness, the least hurt;
sympathetic, taking our sorrows and our joys to Himself as His own, for He
makes them His own on Calvary; universal, excluding no one from the
effect of His love (it is men who exclude themselves from His love), excluding
no one from any degree of love—it is we who, by our sins and lack of
co-operation, limit the degree of love. His love for us then is perfect, and of
that perfection His Heart is the symbol.
His Heart is the
symbol also of perfect love of God. As man, He perfectly and constantly
recognizes God for what He truly is, and is led thereby to elicit three acts,
consecration, reparation and obedience. By seeing in its fullness the infinite
goodness of God, He is led to consecrate His whole created nature to the love,
worship and service of God; He is led to work for a similar consecration on the
part of all rational creation. By recognizing the offended justice of God,
Christ is prompted to repair, to atone for the ingratitude and evil of men. By
recognizing the infinite majesty of God, He is prompted to submit Himself
wholly to that sovereign power, and to work towards the submission of all
rational beings.
Since Christ is a
unique man, He does these three in a unique way. The consecration is His first
act in coming into the world. (Heb. X.5.) The reparation, while spread over the
whole of His life, takes a special form in the Passion. And by divine decree,
He Himself becomes, even as man, the King of God's kingdom. He goes further. He
is unique, not only in His own personal prerogatives, but also in His special
efficacy in producing like effects in other men—in leading them to the same
consecration, the same reparation, the same complete submission to God's
majesty. Christ then is King, ruling in the name of God; He is a Priest,
consecrating all men to the worship of God; He is a Victim, of infinite value,
offered to the justice of God, atoning for men's sins.
To purify us from all
sin, to make us wholly submissive to God's will, to consecrate us wholly to God—these
are the great aspirations of the Heart of Jesus. To respond to these
aspirations is the great work of true devotion to His Heart. That devotion is
the great means by which we come more and more under the influence of the great
High Priest, by which we submit to His gentle rule as king, and by which we
become victims with Him for men's sins. Christ wishes to reign in our hearts by
love, and thereby offer to His Father a perfect kingdom, that is, a perfect
humanity that has perfectly atoned for its sins, has perfectly reached the
measure of divine grace, perfectly loves God. And so Christ and the Christian
must continue the work of repairing for sin, of extending the kingdom of God,
of consecrating men, as long as that work is needed—that is, until the number
of the elect is made up, and time passes into eternity. 'The end shall come
when He shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God the Father, when He shall
have brought to nought all principalities and powers. And when all things shall
be subject to Him, then the Son Himself also shall be subject to Him that put
all things under Him.' (1 Cor. XV.24-28.)
"The Son Himself
shall be subject to the Father". The future tense does not here refer to
Christ as an individual man, since He is, and has been from the first instant
of His conception, perfectly subject to the Father. The future refers rather to
the "pleroma" of Christ, the fullness of God's design in the
Incarnation. Time will come to an end when Christ will have perfectly fulfilled
His work of atonement and consecration, and the elect 'attain to full measure
of the stature of Christ.' (Ephs. IV.13.)
All this work of
completing the design of the Incarnation is the work of love. As each member
receives the active power he needs, the church achieves its natural growth,
building itself up through love. (Ephs. IV.16.) The body, the church, depends
on Christ, depends on love. Atonement, consecration, setting up the kingdom of
God—all this is the work of Christ, loving God and loving men.
If we would join in
the work of Christ, we must join in His love and be joined to Him by love. When
we consecrate ourselves to God, we must do so remembering how much there is in
us that cannot, through its sinfulness, be properly offered to God. And the
more we advance in love, the more we realize how much that is in us is unworthy
to be offered to Him. This will lead in turn to the poignant desire to atone
for all sin, in ourselves and in others, that our consecration may be holy and
acceptable. By consecration and atonement, in turn, we submit ourselves to the
kingdom of Christ—we become truly and fully His subjects, He becomes truly and
fully our King. "Christ's office as King is closely bound up with His
office as Redeemer and Priest. For as Redeemer He purchased His kingdom at the
price of His own blood, and as Priest He offers himself as a victim for our
sins." (Quas Primas, § 18.) Those whom Christ sanctifies by His
atonement, He consecrates to God; those whom He consecrates, He makes part of
the kingdom of God. He will continue to grow as Consecrator, as Priest and as
King to the end of time; the main purpose of our devotion to Him is to allow
His action on us ever fuller and fuller scope.
We may make all this
doctrine more concrete by seeing it in relation to the Mass. The Mass is the
great act by which Christ continues to exercise His atoning and consecrating
power as Priest, and also His authority as King. For in and by the Mass, Christ
continues to atone for the sins of men; thereby He consecrates
the race more and more completely to God by sanctifying it; thereby He
establishes His reign on earth. This reign is not indeed merely a matter of
the suasion or attraction exercised by love; Christ really possesses the power
to command (and all legitimate commands come ultimately from Him); but He wishes
that the obedience to the commands should be primarily the result of love. This
is only another way of saying that unless there is charity in the soul, no
other virtue is efficacious for merit or salvation; for without charity there
is no sanctifying grace, no supernatural life; without charity even the most
heroic obedience is dead and meritless. Without charity we cannot fully profit
by what Christ does for us in the Mass.
The Mass is then the
great act of love by which Christ atones for sin, sanctifies us and rules over
us. As we profit by what Christ does for us in the Mass, Christ comes to rule
our minds, wills, hearts, bodies—our whole being. (Quas Primas, § 42.)
The Heart is thus the
perfect symbol and summary of the magnificent plan by which God works out the
salvation of men. Christ's authority as King, His efficacious action as Priest
and Saviour, His infinite compassion as lover of mankind—all these attributes
are typified by His Heart; by His Heart we are reminded of them and prompted to
give Him the ready obedience we owe Him as King, the persevering co-operation
necessary for redemption, and the constant faithful love He deserves as supreme
lover of the whole world.
Devotion to the
Sacred Heart is built around two things: the actuality of Christ's love for us,
the ideal of the love we should have for Christ. The devotion sets up and
intensifies those mutual relations between Christ and ourselves through which
His love for us and our love for Him is fully exercised. The love of the Sacred
Heart is co-terminous with the Christian life; it is perfect only when we give
ourselves wholly to Christ and He gives Himself wholly to us.
To speak of Christ
"giving Himself wholly to us" may need some explanation. He gives
Himself wholly to us from the beginning, since His love is perfect from the
beginning. In the Passion He showed us so clearly that He was willing to do
anything to win our love. But the chief relation between Christ and
ourselves is love, and love is not perfect till it is perfectly reciprocated.
While Christ loves us with an unlimited and unreserved love, He exercises this
love only in proportion as we love Him in return. He acts "suaviter et
fortiter" (gently and strongly). He will never do any violence to our free
will; so when we refuse Him anything, to that extent He is excluded from our
heart, from working within us, and exercising the effects of His love. He will
not give Himself wholly to us till we consent to receive Him wholly—that is,
till we love Him perfectly, without reserve, condition or limit.
We ought to be
devoted to Christ since He has been so heroically devoted to us. The essence of
the devotion is Christ's appeal for love and our answer to that appeal. He made
His great bid for men's hearts in the Passion; it is by sharing in the Passion
that we respond to His call for love. The means by which He exercised His love
for us are also the means by which we grow in love for Him. It is here
particularly that we can see the devotion, not as an added refinement, a
spiritual luxury which we might take or leave as we please, but as an integral
part of Christ's redemption.
For the very Heart
that died for us on Calvary has given us the means by which we can come to a
perfect share in His work on Calvary; He has set up special relations between
Calvary and the sacraments. So the great manner of practising the devotion is
the right use of the sacraments. Baptism gives us an entry into Christ's way of
life by giving us an entry into His death. Those who have been baptized have been
baptized into His death; we were buried with Him that we might walk in newness
of life. (Roms. VI.3.) By confirmation we are strengthened to endure the
difficulties and trials we are bound to meet in living anything so difficult as
Christ's Passion. By penance, Christ extends to us the fruits of His Passion,
forgiving actual sin and weakening the roots of sin within us. Penance removes
sin, not only as an offence against the majesty of God, but also as an obstacle
to the free play of divine love in our hearts or wills. And penance prepares us
to share actively in the Mass, and thereby in the Passion. By taking part in
the Mass, we take part in what Christ did on Calvary—a part which, however
mysterious, is very real. And the most active, the most complete way of sharing
in the Mass is by Holy Communion. The Church (that is, Christ) commands the
priest to complete his Mass by Communion, and strongly urges the people to do
so too. Mass and the sacraments are the perfect ways of reciprocating Christ's
love, the perfect ways of practising devotion to the Sacred Heart.
The beginning, the
middle and the end of all true devotion to the Sacred Heart is then the proper
use of the sacraments. Baptism, confirmation, penance and Eucharist—the four
whose grace is intended to be spread over the whole Christian life—have special
connections with the Heart; it is by these four that the Heart of Christ
appeals to every Christian for love; it is by these four that every Christian
heart can answer that appeal. We need not, of course, restrict our devotion to
the sacraments; the church has given the warmest approval to honour paid to
Christ's Heart, and to acts of consecration. But these latter forms of devotion
are important mainly because they help to produce the right dispositions of
mind for approaching the sacraments, and for drawing out the full benefit from
the sacraments. And the more we have of these right dispositions, the more
powerfully will the love of Christ work on us and in us through the sacraments.
The right dispositions are all summed up in love; it is love that makes the
reception of the sacraments acts of true devotion to the Heart.
Two conclusions
follow immediately. Whoever receives the sacraments in the state of grace has
divine love, and so is practising the devotion, even though he may not think of
it in these terms. In this sense the church has always inculcated and practised
the devotion. But secondly, we must note, the more prominent the love-motive
becomes, the more explicitly the sacraments become devotion to the Sacred
Heart. It is possible to receive the sacraments out of routine, out of a
kind of business-like desire for spiritual self-improvement, or simply because
we are commanded to do so. But the higher motive is to cleanse away from our
heart all obstacle to the full dominion over us of the love of Christ. The
sacraments become an explicit part of the devotion in so far as they are
explicit fulfillments of the primary law of love—that we must love God with our
whole being. In fulfilling this law, we tend to eliminate every motive other
than the goodness of God who deserves to be loved for His own sake. Or, to put
it more concretely, the Sacred Heart instituted the sacraments primarily to
enable us to love, and to appeal to us for love; they are His abiding acts of
charity towards mankind; the more we look on them as effects of His
love, the more they become causes of our love.
These four are
ordinarily successive in time—we pass from baptism to confirmation, and then to penance and to Holy Communion. We must however be on our guard against looking
on baptism as a sacrament which, once received, can be thought of merely as a
past event. Those sacraments which can be received only once are intended by
Christ as sources from which we can continue to draw grace throughout our whole
lives; baptism and confirmation prepare us for every succeeding moment
of our lives. If we wish to honour and love the Heart aright, we must use
aright what baptism and confirmation give us—the power to "walk in newness
of life" by faith, hope and charity, the power to fight manfully against
all obstacles. The end to which these sacraments are directed is a perfect
Communion in which Christ gives Himself entirely to us and we give ourselves
entirely to Him—the perfect Communion of the Beatific Vision. The end or
purpose of the Christian life is the setting up of perfect relations between
Christ and the Christian. Since all these relations are contained in love,
devotion to the Sacred Heart is co-terminous with the Christian life. Let us
now look at the mutual relations that should exist between Christ and
ourselves.
There are two phrases
in the preface of the Mass of the Sacred Heart which concretely sum up the
proper relations between Christ and ourselves: "largitatis sacrarium"
(a sanctuary of divine generosity), "paenitentibus salutis refugium"
(a refuge of compassionate salvation to the penitent). Generosity and
compassion are the two great traits of the Sacred Heart in His dealings with
us; they should be ours in dealing with Him.
