I often think that religions can be divided into catholic and protestant traditions. The catholic traditions are ones like Hinduism that have a lot of images, smells and bells and the protestant ones are like Islam and Judaism that reject such an approach. Within Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism would fall into the catholic category and Zen into the protestant one. Today is the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus which is a very catholic devotion that seems to be making something of a comeback. It was popular when I was a child and every catholic home had a picture of the Sacred Heart above the mantelpiece. It is an iconic illustration and shows Jesus with his heart either exposed in his body or being held in his hand. The heart has a crown of thorns around it and fire coming out of it. Often the hands of Jesus have the marks of the nails which nailed him to the cross on which he died. As an icon it is not meant to be taken literally but seen as an illustration of the love that God in Jesus has for humanity, a love that led to his death and of course his resurrection.
The devotion has a long history and is associated with saints and mystics over the centuries but perhaps above all with St Margaret Mary Alacoque, a 17th cy French nun who had visions of Jesus during which he revealed his heart to her. In one apparition he told her “My Divine Heart is so passionately in love with humanity, and with you in particular, that it cannot keep back the pent-up flames of its burning charity any longer. They must burst out through you.” These apparitions took place at a time when Jansenism, a heresy that accepted predestination, was puritanical in its approach to morality and instilled fear into the hearts of believers, “turning a religion of faith and love into one of pessimism and scrupulosity” was spreading throughout Europe. Devotion to the Sacred Heart was an antidote to this and was promulgated by the Jesuits after Margaret Mary’s Jesuit spiritual director Claude de La Colombiere saw her experiences as an expression of God’s infinite love, mercy and forgiveness. It is no wonder then that the first Jesuit pope, Pope Francis has let it be known that he intends to write a document on the Sacred Heart of Jesus to “ illuminate the path of ecclesial renewal, but also to say something significant to a world that seems to have lost its heart" as part of the ongoing celebrations in the catholic church marking the 350th anniversary of the first apparition of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart declined after the Second Vatican Council when it was considered to be rather pious and sentimental and belonging to an age of outmoded and anachronistic practices. Now pictures of the Sacred Heart are not found in catholic homes and believers can be quite conflicted about it. In 1972 Fr Pedro Arrupe, the saintly General of the Jesuits reconsecrated the Society to the Sacred Heart and explained the reason for this saying, “We find ourselves then in an historic moment of contestation, of criticism, even of rejection, of traditional attitudes. This entails great dangers, but it also has the advantage of compelling us to go to the very heart of things.” He concludes that Jesuits have “the duty of reflecting seriously on what is essential in the Sacred Heart devotion and of finding ways to channel and present it to the world of today.” In doing this he admitted that he found it difficult because of conflicting opinions regarding this devotion and hoped that he might help “resolve the ascetic, pastoral and apostolic problems which the devotion to the Sacred Heart presents today”.
One of the problems in any religion is that we can fail to get to the heart of things. We can fail to read our scriptures, prayers and images symbolically which often results in misunderstandings. I once had to reprimand a class of students that laughed at images of the Hindu Gods, simply not seeing the symbolism of the iconography or realising the meaning there might be in their many arms of their infinite capacity to help and support believers. When I asked the class what an outsider might think if they were to see a picture of the Sacred Heart in a catholic home, the answer was that Jesus was a human being – with a heart outside his body, really? Familiarity had simply closed their eyes to seeing the meaning in their own icons. Part of the interfaith journey is to see our own images through the eyes of others for good and for ill. I was helped by comments of Adyashanti, an American Buddhist teacher on the notion of the Sacred Heart. He speaks of his encounter with St Therese and how through her found his heart was being opened to the beginning of the transmission of the Jesus story which is the transmission of the love of the sacred heart, of the deep, open, unguarded intimacy of love. In this he was beginning to experience, he said, the heart of sacred love. Is this not what is going on in devotion to the Sacred Heart? Is it not to follow the way of the heart? Does it not call us to a love that is willing to pour ourselves into life so that our lives become expressions of love and compassion? Is it not to recognise the sacredness of life and our responsibility for trying to make the love of our own hearts an expression of what we do with our one wild and precious life? Does our world not need such love and forgiveness? And does not such a love bring its own share of sadness and suffering which we hope might be redemptive?
The devotion has a long history and is associated with saints and mystics over the centuries but perhaps above all with St Margaret Mary Alacoque, a 17th cy French nun who had visions of Jesus during which he revealed his heart to her. In one apparition he told her “My Divine Heart is so passionately in love with humanity, and with you in particular, that it cannot keep back the pent-up flames of its burning charity any longer. They must burst out through you.” These apparitions took place at a time when Jansenism, a heresy that accepted predestination, was puritanical in its approach to morality and instilled fear into the hearts of believers, “turning a religion of faith and love into one of pessimism and scrupulosity” was spreading throughout Europe. Devotion to the Sacred Heart was an antidote to this and was promulgated by the Jesuits after Margaret Mary’s Jesuit spiritual director Claude de La Colombiere saw her experiences as an expression of God’s infinite love, mercy and forgiveness. It is no wonder then that the first Jesuit pope, Pope Francis has let it be known that he intends to write a document on the Sacred Heart of Jesus to “ illuminate the path of ecclesial renewal, but also to say something significant to a world that seems to have lost its heart" as part of the ongoing celebrations in the catholic church marking the 350th anniversary of the first apparition of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart declined after the Second Vatican Council when it was considered to be rather pious and sentimental and belonging to an age of outmoded and anachronistic practices. Now pictures of the Sacred Heart are not found in catholic homes and believers can be quite conflicted about it. In 1972 Fr Pedro Arrupe, the saintly General of the Jesuits reconsecrated the Society to the Sacred Heart and explained the reason for this saying, “We find ourselves then in an historic moment of contestation, of criticism, even of rejection, of traditional attitudes. This entails great dangers, but it also has the advantage of compelling us to go to the very heart of things.” He concludes that Jesuits have “the duty of reflecting seriously on what is essential in the Sacred Heart devotion and of finding ways to channel and present it to the world of today.” In doing this he admitted that he found it difficult because of conflicting opinions regarding this devotion and hoped that he might help “resolve the ascetic, pastoral and apostolic problems which the devotion to the Sacred Heart presents today”.
One of the problems in any religion is that we can fail to get to the heart of things. We can fail to read our scriptures, prayers and images symbolically which often results in misunderstandings. I once had to reprimand a class of students that laughed at images of the Hindu Gods, simply not seeing the symbolism of the iconography or realising the meaning there might be in their many arms of their infinite capacity to help and support believers. When I asked the class what an outsider might think if they were to see a picture of the Sacred Heart in a catholic home, the answer was that Jesus was a human being – with a heart outside his body, really? Familiarity had simply closed their eyes to seeing the meaning in their own icons. Part of the interfaith journey is to see our own images through the eyes of others for good and for ill. I was helped by comments of Adyashanti, an American Buddhist teacher on the notion of the Sacred Heart. He speaks of his encounter with St Therese and how through her found his heart was being opened to the beginning of the transmission of the Jesus story which is the transmission of the love of the sacred heart, of the deep, open, unguarded intimacy of love. In this he was beginning to experience, he said, the heart of sacred love. Is this not what is going on in devotion to the Sacred Heart? Is it not to follow the way of the heart? Does it not call us to a love that is willing to pour ourselves into life so that our lives become expressions of love and compassion? Is it not to recognise the sacredness of life and our responsibility for trying to make the love of our own hearts an expression of what we do with our one wild and precious life? Does our world not need such love and forgiveness? And does not such a love bring its own share of sadness and suffering which we hope might be redemptive?
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