Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

The human heart is this most noble and precious organ from which life and love flow like blood through our veins.  Our heart is our hidden core, our most important, intimate, and personal identity.  If you never discover someone’s heart, you will never really know them – and even when you’ve known and loved someone for a long time their heart remains hidden like a secret that they must choose to reveal again and again and you must choose to rediscover constantly.  Our heart remains hidden within our body, and it is only by loving and becoming vulnerable that it can be know by others.

The Sacred Heart of Christ raises the human experience of love to a sublime and divine level.  Nothing of the human experience of love is excluded from the Sacred Heart – it experiences the pain of love, the longing of love, the vulnerability of love, the joy of love, the strength of love, the hope of love, the clarity of wisdom that comes from love.  The unweakened heartbeat is divine love continually overcoming our sins and failures with mercy.  But just as the human heart is hidden in the body, revealed only in a loving encounter, so it is with Christ’s heart.  To know who He truly is, His heart, He must reveal it to us – and this He has fully accomplished.  On our side all that lacks is our reception of this revelation.  We can only receive it if our heart is made as vulnerable as His.  We should understand that Christ’s mercy is the ache of love in His heart at His separation from us.  He is vulnerable, susceptible to our weaknesses and failures as a friend and as God.  So long as we do not discern our state, our need for mercy, the secret of the Sacred Heart remains hidden.  When we open in our vulnerability trusting in God’s mercy we can catch a glimpse of the Sacred Heart.

GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS:

I will address myself as is right to those who have come from Egypt. They have come here eagerly, having overcome ill will by zeal. They come from that Egypt which is enriched by the river who is Christ, raining out of the earth and like the sea in its season—if I too may follow in my small measure those who have so eloquently spoken of these matters. They too are enriched by Christ my Lord. He too was once fugitive in Egypt; the first, when he fled from Herod’s massacre of the children, and now by the love of the fathers for their children, by Christ the new food of those who hunger after good, who offers the greatest alms of corn of which history speaks and men believe. He is the bread that came down from heaven and gives life to the world, that life which is indestructible and indissoluble. It is of him that I now seem to hear the Father saying, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.”¹

JEROME:

And as the lover of humankind I will draw them to believing in cords of love, just as that which is written in the Gospel: “No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me will have drawn him.” But they thought that my light yoke was very heavy; and I bent toward them, leaving the kingdom of heaven so that I may eat with them, having assumed the human form. Or rather, I gave them my body as food; I was both food and table companion.²

CHRYSOSTOM:

The philanthropy of God does not tolerate [abandonment]. “What can I do for you? Shall I view you as I did Sodom and destroy you like Gomorrah? My heart is upset.” Here the love of God appears to imitate the passionate human being or, better yet, the affectionate mother. “My heart is upset, just as a woman would say about her child. My heart is upset just like the mother’s.” However, the previous metaphor was only partially adequate. “My heart is troubled in my regret”? God is troubled! Let no one ever think it! God forbid!³

THEODORET OF CYR:

“My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute the fierceness of my anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim.” God imitates a father and mother who are naturally worried and cannot turn away from their children for too long. He says that, however, not because he wills one thing now and then changes his mind. Rather, he expresses his thought in different ways, in anger and love, in threat and mercy, chastising and persuading.⁴

JEROME:

Unsearchable and hidden can be given two senses. The riches were previously unable to be searched out. They are now laid open after the Lord’s passion. Another sense, perhaps even better: Those things which by nature were unsearchable to humanity are the ones that have been made known by God’s revelation.⁵

THEODORET:

The divine apostle says not only that Christ’s nature is divine but also that “his riches are unsearchable.” “And how does one preach if his riches are indeed unsearchable?” “I preach this very thing,” he says, “that they are unsearchable.”⁶

MARIUS VICTORINUS:

From this we see what it means to say that the mystery was concealed in God, for he adds “according to the purpose of the ages.” This means that, after certain ages had reached their destined end, the mystery was to appear through the presence of the Lord in whom it had been concealed. For it was proper for it to be revealed through the One in whom it was concealed.⁷

MARIUS VICTORINUS:

But how are persons strengthened and made firm through the Spirit of God? By “Christ’s dwelling in the inner man,” he says. For when Christ begins to dwell in the inner citadel of the soul, persons are made strong by might through the Spirit. In this way everything of a hostile nature is evicted.⁸

AMBROSIASTER:

Paul prays that believers be made more steadfast, not doubting but believing increasingly that Christ dwells in them even when they do not see him with their physical eyes. He prays that the Spirit which has been given them might infuse into them a certainty that Christ lives and is the Son of God, so that he lives by faith in their hearts. Thus when we have faith in him we behold him in our hearts. The benefit of this is that we grow more sure of his blessing. He does not desert us. He is always present through that faith in him which he guards in us. The gift of the Spirit, which is also the gift of God the Father, is given to us that he may keep us safe, to his glory.⁹

MARIUS VICTORINUS:

The one who knows the love that “passes all understanding” will better express the full measure of love for Christ. Paul prays that they may first know [the love of Christ] rather than do something. Doing comes from this knowing.¹⁰

HIPPOLYTUS:

The Lord’s body furnished both sacred blood and holy water to the world.… This body, clinically dead, still has a great power of life in it. For what [normally] does not flow from dead bodies flowed from this one, that is, blood and water. This happened so that we might know the great power for life possessed by the power that inhabited this body that, even while dead, was able to pour forth to us the causes of life.¹¹

1. ON THE ARRIVAL OF THE EGYPTIANS, ORATION 34.1.  Ferreiro, A. (2003). Introduction to the Twelve Prophets. In A. Ferreiro (Ed.), The Twelve Prophets (pp. 44–45). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
2. COMMENTARY ON HOSEA 3.11.  Ferreiro, A. (2003). Introduction to the Twelve Prophets. In A. Ferreiro (Ed.), The Twelve Prophets (p. 45). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
3. HOMILIES ON REPENTANCE AND ALMSGIVING 4.18.  Ferreiro, A. (2003). Introduction to the Twelve Prophets. In A. Ferreiro (Ed.), The Twelve Prophets (p. 45). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
4. COMMENTARY ON HOSEA 11.  Ferreiro, A. (2003). Introduction to the Twelve Prophets. In A. Ferreiro (Ed.), The Twelve Prophets (p. 45). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
5. EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS 2.3.8–9.  Edwards, M. J. (Ed.). (1999). Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians (p. 149). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
6. EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS 3.8.  Edwards, M. J. (Ed.). (1999). Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians (p. 149). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
7. EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS 1.3.11.  Edwards, M. J. (Ed.). (1999). Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians (p. 151). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
8. EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS 1.3.16–17.  Edwards, M. J. (Ed.). (1999). Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians (p. 154). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
9. EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS 3.17.1–2.  Edwards, M. J. (Ed.). (1999). Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians (p. 154). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
10. EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS 1.3.18–19.  Edwards, M. J. (Ed.). (1999). Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians (p. 156). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
11. FRAGMENT ON THE TWO ROBBERS 1–2.  Elowsky, J. C. (Ed.). (2007). John 11–21 (p. 327). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.