GOD'S QUEST FOR LOVE
Of
all the lovers who have caught the imagination or stirred the hearts of men,
the greatest by far is Christ. No other has ever hungered so eagerly for love,
nor found the road to the heart of the beloved so beset with disappointments
and obstacles. No lover has ever suffered so much from human fickleness,
coldness, disdain and infidelity. More than any other, He has found that
"the course of true love never did run smooth." No one has ever been
so patient, so resolute in the face of disappointments, so gentle, so forgiving
in the midst of infidelities. The love story of Christ is unique, because the
lovers in it are not remote figures who lived in a distant past, nor imaginary
people who never lived at all, but the living Christ and our living selves. The
bride whose love He seeks to win is the human race. He seeks His beloved
ardently not because her beauty draws Him powerfully to her, but because she is
so ungainly and ungracious that only He can give her lasting beauty and joy;
she is so needy that only He has riches enough to fill her heart.
He
desires neither a helpless slave nor a mercenary hireling, but a spouse who
will give herself to Him as He gives Himself to her- fully, freely, in the
unbreakable bonds of marriage. He wishes to force nothing on her or from her,
but seeks her ready, complete consent to that unreserved intimacy which can
grow only from mutual love. It is only by her wish that He can fill her with all
the comeliness and grace He ardently seeks to bestow. His seeking must go on to
the end of the world; only then will the number of the elect be filled up, and
His lovers present themselves to Him as a bride without spot or wrinkle or
blemish (Ephs. V.27.); only then will the hunger of His Heart be satisfied.
Human
history is the period of Christ's courtship; until history has passed into
eternity, He has the arduous, painful task of winning His bride. He is not
hampered, as other men are, by the limitations of time or space. In His search
for lovers, He roams over the whole earth, and to the end of time; He is with
us all days, as lover no less than as king, to the consummation of the world.
By His church, His teaching, His grace, He seeks to draw every human heart to
Himself. His bride-to-be little guesses how whole-heartedly she is loved and sought;
she pays but little attention to His pleadings or His promises. But neither
rebuff nor rejection can weary Him. For the Eternal Father who entrusted Him
with the quest for love has fitted Him perfectly for it. He has given His Son a
patience that no unkindness can discourage, a tenderness which meets our
rejection with compassion rather than with anger, a Heart that meets our
slightest response with generosity and ardour. That Heart enables Him now, as
it did in the Passion, to surmount the worst that men can do to Him, and to go
on seeking the love of men till time shall be no more.
As
His great work is to plead for love, our great work is to respond. We are all,
even the greatest of us, limited and ineffective in many ways; but however weak
we may be in mind or body, there is one kind of genuine greatness we can all
achieve—the greatness of an ardent, unreserved love. The first person who
grasped the intensity of Christ's appeal for love was His Mother; she became
the greatest of God's creatures because she responded most perfectly to His
appeal. True devotion to the Sacred Heart was first and best understood by her
in whom God took a human heart to Himself. We should try to imitate Mary by
'pondering over God's words in our hearts' (Luke II. 19), so as to see how much
He has loved us, and so be prompted to love Him worthily in return. We should
endeavour to understand the true nature of devotion to the Sacred Heart.
Understanding the Devotion
Every
true devotion is marked by two great characteristics: it finds its roots in
solid doctrine, it produces flowers of solid practice. It takes its rise in
revealed truth, not in imagination or in sentimentality, and it leads on
constantly to acts of virtue. To understand any devotion properly, we must see
divine doctrine as the motive and the guide for the devotion we practise; it is
useful then to collect in one place some of the main beliefs which lie at the
root of devotion to the Sacred Heart.
We
must first remind ourselves of the unique and mysterious nature of any devotion
to the humanity of Christ. For when we think of doctrine, or teaching, we are
inclined immediately to think of words, spoken or written. But the Word on
which the devotion to the humanity is based is neither spoken nor written, but
is a divine Person who has always been with God, and is God. Christianity is
not primarily a matter of embracing a form of belief, of accepting a particular
doctrine; it is accepting or receiving a Person. "God, having spoken of
old to the fathers through the prophets by many partial revelations and in
various ways, in these last days hath spoken to us by one who is Son. As many
as received Him, He gave them power to become the sons of God." (Hebrews
I.1; John I.12.) The Word of God, sent into the world in the likeness of sinful
flesh (Romans VIII.3.), is God's supreme manifestation and revelation of
Himself. The Incarnate Word is the basis and the source of all true belief and
of all salutary action. Devotion to the Sacred Heart is a particular way of
knowing, loving and imitating the Incarnate Word. Doctrine we need, words and
ideas we need; but the ideas, the words and the doctrine are of value only in
so far as they bring us into living contact with the Person, the Divine Word. We
must study not so much a belief, as a Person; we must love and imitate that
Person, that Man, rather than merely exercise our intellects.
The
great ways in which the Incarnate Word enters into our daily lives may be put
by bringing together the ideas of Saints John and Paul: He in whom the fullness
of the Godhead dwells in a corporal manner, dwelt amongst us full of grace and
truth, and of His fullness we have all received; for from Moses we received the
Law, but through Jesus Christ we received grace and truth. (Col. II.9; John I.14,16,17.)
Since Christ is "true God of true God, of one Substance with the
Father" (the Nicene Creed), the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him, yet
in a corporal manner because He has united humanity to His divinity, in order
that He may manifest the power and lovableness of divinity in a way
accommodated to our weak human understanding. Even as man, He is full of grace
and truth, that is, full of the perfections which make Him eminently pleasing
to God ("full of grace:); and He is "full of truth" because He
teaches men all they need to know in a way they can understand. Thereby Christ
gives us something better than the Law which God gave to men through Moses;
that is, Moses could instruct us on what our obligations are, but he could not
usurp the function of Christ which is to impart the inner strength and
motivation which enables us to fulfill those obligations. Christ, unlike Moses,
and a fortiori unlike all merely human teachers, works in the innermost
heart of man by sanctifying grace and by all the virtues.
The
following paraphrase of New Testament texts is offered as a summary of the
divine doctrine which underlies the devotion to the Sacred Heart. Since that
devotion is a way of honouring the Incarnate Word, it is necessary to see the
Incarnation in relation to the whole plan of Divine Providence.
The
Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us with every spiritual good in
Christ. In Him He singled us out before the creation of the world in order to
sanctify us wholly. In His great love for us, even before our creation, He
chose to adopt us as His sons in Christ through the abundant riches of His
grace. From God we derive our union with Christ Jesus, because He has become to
us wisdom God-imparted, yea and justification from sin, and redemption. He has
thereby delivered us from the powers of evil, and transferred us to His own
kingdom to be ruled by His Son. Being rich in mercy, He has given us life in
Christ, and has seated us with Christ in the heavenly places to show forth, in
the ages to come, the surpassing riches of His grace through His kindness to us
in Christ.
It
was as the great High Priest of these good things to come that Christ was sent
into the world to offer for men a perfect sacrifice; what He offered did not
belong to the natural creation, it was an offering not of the blood of goats
and calves (as in the Old Testament), but of His own blood, thus obtaining for
us everlasting redemption. By the guidance of the Eternal Spirit, He offered
Himself to God, purifying our guilty consciences from the corruption and death
of sin, and elevating us to the service of the living God. This High Priest,
Christ, had already in His mortal life all the perfection necessary for this
great work and for supplying our needs; He was holy, undefiled, set apart from
sinners, exalted above all created things, even the most heavenly; He was so
perfect that, unlike other priests, He did not need to offer sacrifice for
Himself or for any sins of His own; and, unlike others, He is not removed from
His priesthood by death, for, having offered Himself on one single occasion as
a sacrifice for the people, He now remains forever and possesses an everlasting
priesthood. It is in this way that He can at all times save those who approach
God through Him, since He lives on to intercede continually for them.
When
He first came into the world (by conception in the womb of Mary), He declared
that His one desire was to do the will of God perfectly. He who was the Word of
God, equal to God, emptied Himself, taking to His own divine nature the nature
of a servant completely submissive to God's commands. He became obedient, even
to the point of dying for God's will, nay even to the point of dying on a
cross. By His sufferings and death in human nature, we obtain redemption, the
forgiveness of sins; for it has pleased the Father through Christ to reconcile
all men to Himself, establishing peace between God and men through the blood of
Christ's cross.
Christ,
by being lifted up on the cross, draws all men to Himself. For all must now
feel the compelling urgency of the love He showed us in His death. And those
who refuse to return Him love for love must at least acknowledge His power.
For, on account of His perfect obedience, God has exalted Him above the
highest, has bestowed on Him a name which is above all names; He has subjected
all things beneath His feet, and has decreed for us a share in His triumph and
glory. We can then truly say that it is out of love that God gave His
only-begotten Son to the world, and sent His Son into the world not to judge
the world, but to save it, for He is a propitiation for our sins.
For,
although He died once, He is now raised from the dead, and death has no more
power over Him. It is God's plan to unite us to Christ's sufferings and death,
and thereby unite us to Him in His resurrection, joy and glory. By baptism, we
enter into a share in His death, and we are buried along with Him. But the
purpose of this is that, as Christ was raised from the dead by the power of the
Father, so we should rise from the death of sin to the life of grace. If we
become one with Him in the likeness of His death, why then we shall be like Him
also in His resurrection.
So
Christ's work as Redeemer is not yet complete. We must co-operate with Him by
joining in His sufferings. Completion will come when Christ has dispossessed
every other sort of power and has subdued all His enemies. The last of these
enemies is death, which He will overcome in the general resurrection. Then
Christ, in His Mystical Body, will be completely subject to God; the evil will
be forever cut off from God's kingdom of love (those who have rejected His love
will submit to His justice). The work of Divine Providence will be fully
achieved.
May
Christ then dwell by faith in our hearts so that, rooted and established in
God's love, we may be able to comprehend with all His saints the vast extent of
His plan and love, to know the charity of Christ which goes beyond anything we
can understand, and thus the work of God's love may be fulfilled in each of us.
The
foregoing texts emphasize the two basic essentials of the devotion to Christ's
Heart: (1) God's love is infinitely abundant and infinitely compassionate
towards sinners; (2) such love demands all our love in return. These two truths
are phases or aspects of the great truth of the Incarnation.
By
the Incarnation God the Son unites human nature to Himself in personal union.
This is the greatest possible act of love for human nature that even God could
perform. Greater honour and esteem not even God could show for our nature than
this. This act of perfect love demands the greatest possible return from man;
man of himself cannot make any adequate return; love in return is given first
by the God-man Christ, then through Him, by all who are united to Him by love.
The love which the man Christ offers God is a love perfectly commensurate with
the demands of the Infinite Goodness. Christ the man is full of this love in
order that we may receive of His fullness. The Incarnation is an act of Divine
Providence elevating and enriching the humanity of Christ, but it touches all
men; all men can come to share in the privileges and powers of the humanity of
Christ "according to the measure of Christ's bestowing." (Eph. IV.
7.)
While
the Incarnation did not change the divine nature, yet certain things became
true of the divine Person which would not otherwise be true. He who is eternity
itself became temporal and mortal; He who is equal to the Father became subject
to the Father; He who is absolute Lord became subject even to men. Men acquired
a new power over God because they entered into a new relation to the humanity
He assumed. Mary is truly the mother of God, Veronica the consoler of God, and
Judas the betrayer of God. Men are admitted to a share of the divine power
which destroys sin and the effects of sin. What Christ communicates to us, He
communicates through His great universal acts—His Sacrifice on Calvary,
His triumph over death through the Resurrection, and the perpetuation of
the sacrifice and the triumph in the Mass. We come to possess the degree
of grace He intends for us by our union with Him in His death, in His
resurrection, that is, by our desire to suffer whatever may be necessary in
order to do what pleases Him, by the triumph of grace over the sinful
inclinations of our human nature.
St.
Margaret herself was very convinced of this connection between the devotion and
the love of Christ's cross. She saw, as all the saints have seen, that we can
love Christ only in the degree in which we love the cross of Christ. Lest any
one be inclined to think her ideal too high, we should realize that the saint
was merely proposing what Paul taught, and taught to the generality of
Christians: "They that are of Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh with
its passions and desires." (Gals. V.24.) And this in turn is but an
exposition of the great commandment: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with thy whole heart", that is, with the readiness to strip away
all that is opposed to the love of God. Thus the love of the Christ who
suffered so much for us is the beginning, the sustaining power and the crowning
perfection of the Christian life, of our "life which is hid with Christ in
God." (Cols. III.3.)
For
the law of the Christian life is the law of growth. Christ desires that the
seed planted at baptism should develop throughout life; life is the period of
time given to us to achieve the degree of perfection to which we are called.
The lowest degree of sanctifying grace is already a dignity and a power which
surpass the whole of the natural creation; God wishes that dignity to grow till
it ennobles the whole man; He wishes the power to grow till it seizes full
possession of man, surrendering him wholly to the wishes of divine love.
The
appeal of the Sacred Heart is but a special form of the general invitation to
all men to love God, to love God perfectly; it is a special form of the
invitation to that perfect love without which no one can enter heaven. The
devotion is special, not in the sense that it is addressed to any special
class, such as priests or contemplatives, since all are equally called to
perfection; it is special rather because it presents God's claims to us in a
specially appealing way. No one need hope to travel along the road to
perfection any more quickly than the speed determined by God; no one need
expect the special gifts (such as visions, ecstasies and miracles) which God
keeps in His own hands. But everyone is called to the love of the cross:
"unless a man take up his cross and follow me, he cannot be my
disciple." (Matt. X.38.) However imperfect or even sinful we may be at the
moment, the love of the cross is an ideal which no one can reject without
rejecting Christ. No one, not even Christ, could love the cross for its own
sake since it is, and typifies, all that is repugnant and repulsive to human
nature. But even the lowest degree of sanctifying grace supposes the readiness
to embrace anything, however painful, in order to avoid offending God
grievously. And from there God wishes to lead us on to the love that gladly
embraces any pain in order to please God in every way that is open to us. To
put it as briefly as possible: we do not need at any moment to be perfect,
but we do need at every moment to wish to be perfect- for the love of
Him who has loved us so much. The manner and the degree of our suffering God
will reveal to us as we approach Him through generous love. It is He who
presents us with the cross, He who gives us the love for the cross, He who
sustains us in carrying it till we achieve the final victory.
This
practical readiness to embrace the cross- to understand it in the light of
divine faith, to bear it in the strength of divine love, to see beyond it to
the everlasting victory that hope promises to us- this readiness is what Paul
calls the "mind of Christ." (1 Cor. 11.16; Phils. II.5.) "Let
that mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. For He, though He was by
nature God, …emptied Himself by taking the nature of a slave and becoming like
unto men. ...He humbled Himself by obedience unto death, yea, unto death upon a
cross." Or, as our Lord had put it "Everyone of you that doth not
renounce all that he possesseth, cannot be my disciple; it behoved Christ to
suffer and so to enter into His glory, and the disciple is not above his master."
(Luke XIV.33, XXIV.46; Matt. X.24.)
Since
this "mind of Christ" is so great and precious a power we need not be
surprised that it is the gift of God, unobtainable by any efforts we might make
by our human faculties. It is set up in us by baptism, strengthened by
confirmation, restored by penance, nourished by Holy Communion. It is by these
sacraments and by the fervent hearing of Holy Mass that we enter more fully,
more intensely and more continuously into the mind and Heart of Christ, so as
to possess His habitual dispositions and aspirations. We thereby grow in the
power to see with the eyes of Christ, to think with His mind, to feel with His
Heart. We are thereby made one with Him so closely that, with the growth of
grace, He can lead us wheresoever He wishes; and He wishes to lead us through
Calvary to the eventual triumph.
Throughout
the long road that stretches between our present sinfulness and our future
perfect union with God, we must meet many difficulties; but all the time, we
are drawing on the patience, meekness, obedience, humility, on the immense
strength and immense love of Christ. For He is "the way, the truth and the
life." (John XIV.6.) He is the way, since "no man cometh to the
Father except by Him" (John XIV.6.); He is the truth, since He is
"the true light that enlighteneth every man that cometh into the
world" (John I.9.); He is the life, since He came that we "might have
life and have it more abundantly" (John X.10.); He is the 'wisdom of God
and the power of God' (I Cor. I.24.), who teaches us all we need to know and
strengthens us to do all we need to perform. In His Heart are all the treasures
of wisdom and grace; He opens His Heart that we may draw on these treasures as
we need or desire. To draw on them we need to enter into His Heart, we need to
have our being in Christ, 'to lead the life which is hid with Christ in God'.
(Cols. III. 3.) In this way Christ comes to live in us more and more fully. And
so we have that unique phrase, the Christian life which includes
in its meaning the life of the Christian and that of Christ at the same time.
For the Christian life is not merely a life that we lead- it 'is no
longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us'; what enables us to lead the
Christian life is the 'Christ who dwells in our hearts by faith' (Eph.
III.17.); the actions of the Christian are not so much the actions he performs
by his powers, but rather the fine flowers and fruits of the Vine which
flourishes within him.
For
Christ the Vine to flourish within us, we must understand what Christ wishes of
us, we must have the 'mind of Christ'; and we learn His mind from His Heart.
Even in human affairs, love brings us inside another's mind with an insight
unparalleled by any other form of knowledge. It is love, setting up in us a
fellow-feeling with Christ's Heart, that shows us what is in His mind. Devotion
to His Heart is not reserved for special persons, occasions or actions; it is a
matter of trying, even in the simplest things, to carry out what is in Christ's
mind for us, to find opportunities to love Him who has loved us so much.
Winding an alarm clock is an act of devotion if we do it to ensure our
punctuality at Mass or work — for He gives us work, as He gives us the Mass,
that through it we may grow perfect in love; eating a meal becomes an act of
true devotion if we try to find in it the strength to do Christ's work.
Whatever our present imperfection or sinfulness, true devotion must aim
at co-operating with Christ that the divine life He purchased for us on Calvary
and bestowed on us in baptism may come to the fullness He wishes to give us.
