Invitation to Love by Leo Cormican, O.M.I. - Chap 2 (cont'd)

Generosity

            Christ is generous towards us. The Passion and the Mass are the transcendent reality and the divine symbol of Christ's endless generosity. He held back absolutely nothing, but, for our sake, surrendered Himself wholly to God's will in a perfect act of infinite generosity. Not even He could make an offering more perfect. We must respond with a like generosity—with a generosity that will show itself in practical gratitude for all He has done for us, and in complete self-surrender to all He wishes to do to us. This self-surrender and gratitude will prompt us constantly to do all we can for Him.

            Such generosity towards Christ is a great practical safeguard in the Christian life. It develops a holy dread of sin, keeping us away from the occasions even of venial sin; it stirs us to beseech Christ for help in temptation; it urges us to repent immediately of sins committed (for generosity does not preserve us from all sin); finally it enables us in practice to distinguish the humility which realizes its own nothingness from the laziness which is content with its own weakness. How many Christians suffer from retarded spiritual growth, because they take too low a view of what Christ expects of them and of what they could do united to the strength of Christ. Contentment with mediocrity is not what it is often mistaken for—a practical judgment of our own limitations or a prudent middle course between sin and saintliness; mediocrity is a slur on Christ's generosity and a contempt for His promises.

Compassion

            Christ, and the Christian, show generosity most effectively in compassion. Christ had compassion on us, on our sins; "while we were yet sinners, Christ died on our behalf". (Roms. V.8.) We must have compassion on Christ, on Christ suffering for our sins. The huge range of Christ's compassion on man is given in the three terms used in the preface to describe His kingdom: justice, love and peace. If we do enjoy these three goods to any extent, if we may hope for their increase, it is because Christ has taken such profound pity on mankind smitten with sin, hatred and conflict. It is by spreading justice, love and peace that we can take compassion on Christ and on suffering humanity.

Justice

            Christ is our justice, our justification. Not merely has He been just towards us, but He conferred justice on us when, through baptism, He raised us up from the death of sin. "Even when we were dead in our transgressions, God Who is rich in His mercy brought us to life with Christ." (Eph. II.5.) Christ is now our justification in the eyes of the Father. He destroyed the decree that was written against us, nailing it to the cross, so that there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ. (Col. II.13; Roms. VIII.1.) If we are in Christ, we are in His love: to the extent we love Christ, we are one with Him, and the Father cannot condemn those who are one with His own divine Son. Christ freely bestowed justice on us; the least we must do is to be just to Christ, giving Him all the service and obedience which is His due. And we can go further. Like Christ, and by Christ's power, we can produce justice in the world; we can do our share towards justifying men from their sins. To use this power of reconciling man to God is to have compassion on the whole body of Christ which is the church. The ordained priest exercises this power in a special way, but it belongs to the church which as a whole possesses a royal priesthood. (1 Pet. II.5.)

Love

            In the actual dispensation of God, however, love is still the great force, and justice cannot be conferred on men or spread through the world without love. We cannot understand Christ justifying man unless we see Christ loving man. If Christ is led to justify us, and to justify us in the special manner of Calvary and of the Mass, He is led by the greatness of His love. All this justification of man is the work of God, who is "rich in mercy", and has saved us "by reason of the great love wherewith He has loved us." (Eph. II.5.) Our dealings with Christ similarly must not be confined to justice; our power to co-operate with Christ in producing justice depends so much on our love. For us, as for Christ, the great driving force must be love. For love sets up far higher and more intimate relations than justice could by itself. Justice prompts us to give another all that is his due; love prompts us to give him all. "If a man take thy coat, give him thy cloak also; if he force thee to go one mile, go with him other two." (Matt. V.40.) Christ here was outlining, not our duties in justice, but the generosity that grows out of love.

Invitation to Love by Leo Cormican, O.M.I. - Chap 2 cont'd

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.

Invitation to Love by Leo Cormican, O.M.I.- Chap 2

UNDERSTANDING CHRIST'S HEART

            Words are important, not because of themselves, but because of the things for which they stand. They are consequently important in proportion to those things—the greater the thing, the greater must be our care in using the word. To know the exact meaning of a word is not the exclusive concern of the scholar. Everyone is interested in the right meaning of words—when those words stand for things he considers important: the doctor does not confuse infectious with contagious; the biologist distinguishes between congenital and hereditary, the informed Catholic between infallible and impeccable. It is only right then that, if we wish to have a true devotion to the Sacred Heart, we should try to know the meaning of the word heart. We need, however, to remember that such a word, dealing with human affairs, has not the same fixity of meaning as triangle or other purely scientific terms. For the world with which science deals remains always the same, while "human" terms describe things and conditions in a human world of thought, feeling and wishing which is constantly changing. Human terms often gather to themselves a wealth of meaning, as the word democracy has done in our own day.

The Word "Heart" in Scripture and Liturgy

            Probably no single word has been so enriched in meaning by usage as the word "heart". Even in Scripture (where it is a key word) it has not one but very many meanings. This multiplicity will result not in confusion but in greater fullness of suggestion and connotation, if we are consciously aware of it. We cannot hope to clear up the meaning of the word perfectly, because it contains that profoundest of natural mysteries—the mystery of free will. Yet an examination of the word will be helpful, since its meanings call attention to the main points of a true devotion to the Sacred Heart.

            The most "material" sense in which the word is used is the 'physical interior' of anything; thus the Book of Exodus (XV.8.) speaks of the 'heart of the sea', and Christ (Matt. XII.40.) of the 'heart of the earth'. This meaning is closely allied to the purely literal sense of the physical heart in the human body; this purely literal sense is, however, rather rare in Scripture, as the word usually denotes the heart as the centre of emotion and desire. In its commonest meaning, the word denotes our inner world of thought, wish and feeling considered as a single whole. "The Lord knoweth the secrets of the heart." (Ps. XLIII.22.) "Mary pondered all these things in her heart." (Luke II.19.) Sometimes the emphasis falls on the intellectual part of this inner world, sometimes on the affective or volitional part. 'The heart of the righteous shall ponder what to answer.' (Prov. XV.28.) "Give to thy servant an understanding heart." (3 Kings III.9.) "Neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive what God hath prepared for them who love Him." (I Cor. II. 9.) Here the emphasis is on the intellectual part of man; the following illustrate the affective part: "Lust not after her beauty in thy heart." (Prov. VI.25.) "He shall give thee the desires of thy heart." (Ps. XXXVI.4.) "The Lord is nigh unto the contrite of heart." (Ps. XXXIII. 19.)

            From this meaning of the inner world of wish and thought, the word easily comes to mean habitual disposition of mind: 'A merry heart is a good medicine.' (Prov. XVII.22.) 'Before destruction, the heart of man is haughty.' (Ibid. XVIII.12.) "I am meek and humble of heart." (Matt. XI.29.) In this sense the word may denote the natural fickleness of human disposition or the need of the heart to be guarded and strengthened by God. "There are many devices in a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord shall stand." (Prov. XIX.21.) "The king's heart is in the hands of the Lord as are the courses of water." (Prov. XXI.1.) "I will put my laws in their heart." (Jer. XXXI.33; Hebr. VIII.10.)

            As the heart is the seat of affection and wish, the word often denotes the inclination to manifest exteriorly the inner thoughts, feelings and desires. "Out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, thefts." (Matt. XV.19.) "The heart of fools proclaimeth foolishness." (Prov. XII.23.)

            In the liturgy (even apart from the Psalms) the word occurs frequently. Its commonest meaning is the inner world of thought, wishing and emotion as a single whole. Thus in the collect of the Mass of the Holy Ghost, the three elements are blended: "O God who didst instruct the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit, grant that in the same Spirit we may be always truly wise and ever rejoice in His consolation." If it had not been for so long embedded in the liturgy, we should be surprised at the phrase: "instruct the hearts", for the word we would more usually employ today would be "mind". We ask God to enlighten our heart, because we wish to have not a merely speculative or theoretical knowledge, but a highly practical knowledge that will begin to issue immediately in Christian conduct, and the heart indicates the emotions and the will as well as the powers of understanding. As a matter of fact, in this simple phrase from the prayer, we have a practical summary of a very fundamental theological truth: that the only knowledge, speculative or practical, which is meritorious in God's sight and helpful to our salvation is a knowledge which is accompanied by love in the heart.

            In the secret of the same Mass, we ask the Holy Spirit to cleanse our heart—to remove the obstacles which stand in the way of effective love; in the postcommunion, we beg Him to make our heart fruitful—to show forth in action the riches and knowledge with which God has endowed us.

            It is with much the same purpose that the prayers at Prime quote from the Psalm (L.12): "A clean heart create in me, O God." And in the litany prayers, we seek those holy desires by which we may devote ourselves wholly to keeping the commandments of God with a clean heart and a chaste body.

            While the direct purpose of the liturgy is not to teach psychology, still some important psychological truths can be drawn from the liturgical prayers, psychological truths that can help us to elicit something of the full meaning of the "Heart" of Jesus, and help us to practise that devotion in a really salutary way. The liturgy is divine doctrine in the form of prayer, that is, in the form of the actual practice of the Christian virtues, especially the virtues of faith, hope and charity which make up the essence of the Christian life. It follows that the liturgy considers man's mental apparatus, not in relation to abstract principles, but in relation to the actual working of the mind, the actual exercise of the virtues. In this way, the real distinction between intellect and will is not indeed denied, but frequently left out of account, since in any deliberate act, intellect, will and emotion normally act together as one.

            One of the great psychological truths we find in the liturgy is that God exists and operates within the very innermost recesses of the human heart. He is present to every being by His essence and power; He is present in a particular way to living things since these have the power of moving themselves; He is present in a still more particular way to rational beings since these have the power within themselves of determining their own conduct. He is present in a unique way to rational beings who possess grace, for this grace is really theirs, and it is also a sharing in the inner life of the Most Holy Trinity. By faith, hope and charity, God really dwells and actually acts within the heart of man—his inner world of thought, will and emotion is turned by God into a sanctuary from which God seeks to reign over the whole of man.

            And however feeble and inadequate the word "seeks" here may be, it calls attention to this mystery of free will that lies in the heart of man. For to rational beings alone does God give the power of resisting His will. By creating a being who can love Him, God creates a being who can forever refuse to bend his will to the will of God; by creating the possibility of love, God creates the possibility of sin. Human nature in the person of Adam sinned; human nature in the person of Christ is restored to love, to the possibility of perfect and unending love. This restoration implies an act of infinite love on the part of God; it implies an act of total surrender to God of the heart of man. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart." (Matt. XXII.37.) Nothing less than total surrender will suffice, for our whole nature must be transformed by grace, and it will be transformed only in proportion as it is all handed over to God by an act of the heart. We cannot make our surrender to God total or perfect at any one moment—for, even though we might be quite innocent at a given moment (e.g., after gaining a plenary indulgence), our heart is yet, in this world, unstable. What we must strive after at each moment is to make our surrender, our love, ever more and more perfect. It is by such striving that we unite ourselves more intimately to the Sacred Heart; for the Heart of Christ never knew any condition except that of full surrender to the will of God, full love for God, and "of his fullness we have all received." (John I.16.)

            The heart of man is then that by which man controls himself, that by which he is most under the control of infinite love, and that by which God establishes His rights over the whole man, and over the whole race. The heart is the meeting place of all the divine graces given to man. Whatever is given to man is given to his heart: 'Son, give me thy heart, let thy eyes keep my commandments.' (Prov. III.1, XXIII.26.) This is as much as to say: you are in the keeping of your heart; let your heart be in my keeping; you will then be wholly in my keeping; then 'thou shalt love the Lord with thy whole heart.' So devotion to Christ's Heart is never complete at any one moment, but by its very nature it strives to become complete.

            "Love therefore is the fulfilling of the law." (Rom. XIII.10.) Love fulfils the law because the other virtues are the means by which love establishes dominion over the whole man. Love is the queen of the virtues, because they exist that they may be always ready and poised to do the bidding of love. Love calls the other virtues—faith, hope and the moral virtues—into play as they are needed to express and exercise love for God. Wherever true virtue is being exercised, there God is at work, but God using a special instrument—the humanity, the Heart of Jesus, which is the symbol and the cause of all the effects produced in man by divine love. The Heart of Jesus is the centre in which all human hearts are attached to God—attached in so far as they respond to His appeal for love.

Invitation to Love by Leo Cormican, O.M.I. - Chapter 1

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.