SACRED HEART OF JESUS. - I. CULT OF THE SACRED H. OF J. - 1. History. The constitutive elements of the cult of the Sacred H. of J. are substantially contained in Revelation. The Holy Fathers insistently exhorted the faithful to respond to the Savior's love for the human race; nor are considerations on Christ's pierced side lacking. However, in the tradition of the first ten centuries there are no traces of a cult of the heart of flesh, symbol of love.
With the 11th century, in the writings and in the piety of the faithful, there begins the development of the elements of this devotion, elaborated in the Church, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, through the collaboration of chosen souls. The environment of intense spirituality that had formed around St. Bernard contributed much.
Through the torn side one arrives at the heart, and a linking between the heart and the love of Jesus begins to be established. In the material wound one sees the wound of love. In passages attributed to St. Anselm and to St. Bernard there is an allusion to the symbolism of the heart pierced for love, but it is not certain whether the heart of flesh is meant. The doubts cease from the middle of the 12th century, the texts becoming more frequent and clearer, but with the exception of some passage of William of St-Thierry (d. c. 1150) and of Guerric of Igny (d. c. 1160), no true traces of devotion appear. This devotion asserts itself, distinct in its object, its end, its spirit and its acts, in the Vitis mystica attributed to St. Bonaventure. In the works of St. Matilda (d. 1298) and of St. Gertrude (d. 1302) the devotion is enriched with exercises and practices, but remains the privilege of mystical souls.
In the following centuries it spreads, without developing. A progress occurs in the 16th century with the Ven. Lanspergius (d. 1539; v.), Carthusian of Cologne, and with Louis of Blois (d. 1566), Benedictine abbot of Liessies. With prayers, exercises and practices they give concrete form to and facilitate the devotion, making it popular. Their influence was decisive in the propagation of the devotion, which enters into Christian asceticism and permeates the schools of spirituality, so that it recurs commonly in the ascetical works of the 17th century.
St. Francis de Sales, very devoted to the Sacred H. of J., he poured his sentiments into the Visitandines and bound the Congregation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (cf. the letter of 10 June 1611 to St. Jane Frances de Chantal). Thus in the Visitation there was, down to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a continuous flowering of fervent devotees, distinguished by special graces. In the Society of Jesus, the tireless Fathers L. Lallemand (d. 1635) and V. Huby (d. 1693) stood out. Despite this diffusion, the devotion remained purely private. St. John Eudes (d. 1680) was the initiator and apostle of the liturgical cult of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (cf. the decree on the heroism of his virtues, 6 Jan. 1903; Acta Sanctae Sedis, 35 [1902-1903], p. 378 ff.). In the brief of beatification (11 Apr. 1909; AAS, 1 [1908], pp. 477-82), he is called "father, doctor and apostle of this devotion." He consecrated to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary his Congregation of priests and had its feast celebrated. He prescribed special exercises and composed the Office and the Mass, which were approved by certain French bishops. Confraternities arose, approved by Alexander VII and Clement X.
In St. John Eudes the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is at first morally united with that of the Heart of Mary, then it becomes detached from it. He in fact composed a special Office and Mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Probably on 20 Oct. 1672 the first feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was celebrated in various localities of France. The Office and the Mass greatly promoted this cult, and St. John Eudes was the direct precursor of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (d. 1690). Besides the visions concerning her private devotion, the Saint had important revelations for the diffusion of the public cult. In the first great apparition (27 Dec. 1673?), Jesus revealed to her the love of his Heart and chose her as an instrument for the fulfillment of the design of saving men through his Heart. Subsequently she was instructed concerning the object, the practices and the spirit of the devotion, which thus received its final systematization. The heart of flesh, surrounded by a crown of thorns and surmounted by a cross, is the symbol of the love of Jesus: a despised love, which seeks love and reparation. In the apparition of 1675 Jesus asked for the public cult, with the institution of a reparatory feast, and indicated to the Saint as collaborator Father Claude de la Colombière (d. 1682). The latter aroused around himself, in the Society of Jesus, fervent apostles, such as Fathers G. de Gallifet and G. Croiset, who continued his work. The cult spread widely, soon opposed by the Jansenists and by some Catholics not well informed.
In 1726 the king of Poland, some bishops and the Visitandines sent a petition to Benedict XIII for the institution of the feast, through the postulation of Father Gallifet. To avoid a refusal the answer was deferred, since, as the promoter of the faith, Prospero Lambertini, noted, there was talk of the heart as "the sensible co-principle of all the virtues and affections and the center of all joys and intimate sorrows." Since, however, the petitioners insisted, on 30 July 1729 the Congregation of Rites replied negatively.
Clement XIII, following countless petitions, among which figured a memorial of the Polish episcopate, expressed in clear and precise terms, had the examination of the cause resumed. On 25 Jan. 1765 the Sacred Congregation of Rites issued the decree of approval. It was expressly determined that the object of the cult is the heart, symbol of love. The Jansenists, because of this clarification, concluded that it was a question of the metaphorical heart, not the real one. The contrary, however, is evident from the postulation and from the decree which approves and extends the cult without changing it. The cult of the heart of flesh was therefore accused of idolatry. Pius VI, however, rejected the error, noting that the heart is adored but "inseparably united with the Person of the Word" (cf. the bull Auctorem fidei 1794; Denz-U, nos. 1562-63).
Pius IX extended the feast to the universal Church with the rite of double major, later elevated to double of first class by Leo XIII, who also approved the litanies. In the encyclical Annum Sacrum (25 May 1899) he ordered the consecration of the human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for 11 June of the same year. Shortly afterwards he urged the bishops to develop the cult with the practice of the First Friday and with the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Pius X ordered that the act of consecration be renewed every year. Benedict XV approved the cult of the Eucharistic Sacred Heart, granting the proper Mass and Office to Ordinaries who request it (decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, 9 Nov. 1921). Pius XI, in the encyclical Miserentissimus (8 May 1928), developed the doctrine of devotion to the Sacred Heart, dwelling in particular on consecration and on reparation for offenses, and elevated the feast to double of first class with a privileged octave of third order.
2. Doctrine
The revelations to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, however, constitute only the occasional cause of the approval, since the Church, prescinding from their truth, has relied on doctrinal reasons. The cult is justified in itself and has its theological foundation in the Catholic doctrine of the adoration of the humanity of Jesus.
In Christ there is one person, the divine person of the Word, and two natures, the divine and the human. The one and same adoration, due to the divine person, is to be attributed to what subsists in it and through it. Honor in fact refers to the whole, that is, to the person, even when it is attributed to a part (St. Thomas, Sum. Theol., 3a, q. 25, a. 1-2). Therefore the humanity of Christ, not for itself, nor considered separately, but insofar as it is united to the Word, is worthy of a true latreutic cult. This is direct and absolute, since the human nature of Christ is adored not for the dignity of a different and distinct person, but for the excellence of the person in whom it subsists and with whom it constitutes a single whole.
This holds for each part of the humanity of Christ. His heart therefore, considered as united to the divine person, is worthy of adoration, which terminates in the very person of Jesus. Every cult has as its ultimate and complete object the whole Jesus Christ, but the different devotions have a proximate, proper and specific object. This, in the cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, is the physical heart of Jesus, that is, the heart of flesh, living and animated, not simply as the most noble part of the body of Christ, but especially as the symbol of his love.
The proper object of the cult therefore is not only the physical heart, nor only the love, but the physical heart as symbol of the love, that is, the Sacred Heart of Jesus burning with love (cf. the decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites 1765 and the letter of Pius VI to Scipione Ricci, 29 June 1781). This is the reason for the special cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The heart in fact has always been taken as the symbol of love, nor is it a purely conventional sign, but a natural sign, because of the real relationship of the heart with love, since love and the other affections, rooted in it, have their repercussion in the heart. The cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus prescinds from the physico-psychological question whether the organ of the sensible affections is the heart (the opinion of the ancients) or the brain (as the moderns hold). Certainly one experiences a repercussion of the affections in the movements of the heart, which, although it is not the eliciting organ of these affections, nevertheless manifests them. The physical heart and the love symbolized must not be considered distinct and separate: they are a single and adequate object of the cult. These two elements constitute a single thing, like the soul and the body, and as the soul has supremacy over the body, so love has it over the physical heart.
Theologians call the heart the proximate material object and the love, divine and human, of Jesus the formal object. Similarly they agree that the object of the cult is the heart as a symbol not only of love, but of the whole interior life of Jesus, that is, of all his affections, sorrows, sacrifices, joys, sufferings, virtues and sensitive feelings. All of this in fact reverberates in the heart. Therefore, by the expression S. C. [Sacred Heart] it is commonly customary to signify the whole person of Jesus, considered in his interior, affective and moral life. From this springs the pre-eminence of this devotion over the others, since it synthesizes the whole life of Christ in love, the cause of the wonders of the Redemption, facilitating for man the intimate knowledge and consequently the love of the Redeemer.
Rationalism has classified this devotion as a form of mawkish and superficial piety. Examined intimately, however, it presents itself as solid and virile, engaging man in the exercise of virtue.
The purpose of this cult is to kindle love in the faithful, so as to correspond to that of Jesus. Therefore it is highly recommended in the pontifical documents (cf. the encyclicals Annum Sacrum and Miserentissimus) and in the writings of St. Margaret M. Alacoque: the personal and collective consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus; and since the love of Jesus is a despised and neglected love, the consecration must be followed by reparation.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has exercised a beneficial influence in the life of the Church. Deism and Jansenism had sought to remove God from man, denying or substantially altering Christian Revelation; devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus unites the soul to God with the bonds of love and Grace, manifesting to man the intimate and true aspect of Christianity. Amid the darkness of rationalistic criticism, the cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus has been a powerful radiance of light. Souls who understood this devotion felt the need for union with Jesus, and thus the beginning of the religious awakening was marked, to which the development of Eucharistic piety is connected.
Bibliography13 works
Vincenzo Carbone
II. CULT OF THE EUCHARISTIC HEART OF JESUS
A devotion whose purpose is to honor the act of love by which Jesus instituted the Eucharist. It is a natural development of the cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, whose origin is not tied to any revelation. Having arisen in France in the second half of the 19th century, it immediately found the support of Msgr. De Ségur, of the blessed Eymard and of St. John Bosco. By 1890 it was already widespread in more than 35 nations, in which numerous confraternities canonically erected in honor of the Eucharistic Heart were counted. Oppositions were not lacking, provoked by the indiscreet zeal of some who wished to represent the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the middle of the Host. The Holy See, while disapproving of these exaggerations (May 27, 1891: in L'ami du clergé, 36 [1914], pp. 675-76; July 15, 1914: AAS, 6 [1914], p. 382), declared, by successive decrees, that it did not intend to prohibit the new cult, by then "positively recognized" (Apr. 3, 1915: AAS, 7 [1915], p. 205). In an apostolic brief of Feb. 16, 1903 (Leonis XIII Pont. Max. Acta, XXII, Rome 1903, pp. 307-10), by which Leo XIII elevated to an archconfraternity the association already existing in Rome, the object of the new cult was clearly specified. On Nov. 9, 1921, Benedict XV crowned the numerous petitions that had reached Rome from all parts of the world with a solemn decree, in which he granted a feast and a proper Office in honor of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, to be celebrated on the Thursday after the octave of Corpus Christi (AAS, 13 [1921], p. 545).
Revelation and theology, in the constant affirmation of the relation of cause and effect between the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Eucharist, show the fitness and the opportuneness of the new cult. Many prophecies of the Old Testament announce that from the Messiah must gush torrents of graces, rivers of living water (Is. 12, 3; 55, 1; 48, 21; Zach. 12, 10). St. Paul presents the Messiah as the miraculous rock, which gives the refreshing water to the Hebrews in the desert (I Cor. 10, 4). St. John emphasizes that the rivers of living water must spring from the depths of the Humanity of Jesus (Io. 7, 37), and points to the fulfillment of the prophecies in the open wound of the Savior's side (Io. 19, 34).
The watchful and devout thought of the Fathers discovers and comments on this reality: the side is brought near to the rock of the desert, the lance of Longinus to the rod of Moses, the wound to the cleft of the rock, and the gushing water to the eucharistic mystery. According to St. John Chrysostom, who evokes the thought of tradition, the Christian must sit down at the eucharistic banquet and bring his lips to the chalice, as if drawing the precious Blood from the side of Christ: «Hinc initium mysteria sumunt, ut cum ad tremendum poculum accessoris sic veniss ac si ex hoc latere potaturus esse» (Hom. 85 in Io.: PG 59, 463).
According to the mystical vision of the Fathers, the Eucharist came forth from the real heart of Jesus as the most precious gift of his love. Already in the Old Testament the psalmist, thinking back on the gift of the manna, exclaimed: «Cogitationes cordis eius in generationem et generationem... ut alar eos in fame» (Ps. 32, 11, 19). In the New Testament the Eucharist, as the fruit of a rethinking of love, is present in that trembling: «Desiderio desideravi hoc Pascha manducare vobiscum» (Lc. 22, 15), and the mysterious Johannine expression «in finem dilexit» (Io. 13, 1) echoes in the moved thought of the Fathers: «Cum esset omnipotens plus dare non potuit, cum esset sapientissimus plus dare nescivit, cum esset ditissimus plus dare non habuit» (celebrated text attributed to St. Augustine).
Cause and effect, suggested in Scripture and illustrated in Tradition, are summed up in the theological synthesis of St. Thomas. It is through the Humanity of Christ, the instrument of the Word, that all the omnipotent power and all the supernatural life of man passes (cf. Sum. Theol., 3e, q. 62, a. 5): this instrumental activity and this divine energy pours forth from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, together with the Blood that gushed forth as the price of Redemption. The wound of the side and of the heart was a divinely established condition so that the torrents of graces hidden in the Humanity of the Word might spring forth: «Ut apertum cor, divinae largitatis sacrarum, torrentes nobis funderet miserationis et gratiae» (Preface of the feast of the Sacred Heart). The first and most exalted grace is the Eucharist, as the actualization and compendium of the human-divine (theandric) love of Jesus for man; a love that expresses itself in the living desire to remain always with the beloved person and to be fused with her in mysterious unity: "This most divine gift came forth from the depths of the heart of that Redeemer, who ardently longed to establish with men this marvelous union" (encycl. Migne charitatis [May 28, 1903], in Leonis XIII Pont. Max. Acta, XXII, Rome 1903, pp. 115-36). - See pl. LXVIII.
