ACTS OF THE 7th

EUROPEAN ASSEMBLY OF LAY DOMINICAN FRATERNITIES

ANNEX Va

HOMILY BY FR. RAJMUND KLEPANEC

FEAST OF THE SACRED HEART

Nearly three years ago, Pope Benedict assumed the office of chief shepherd. Much has been said about his pastoral preoccupations and the direction which this pontificate is taking. We know him as the teacher, the theologian, the guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy. We are aware, especially since Summorum Pontificium, of his concern for continuity in liturgical tradition. But what is this Pope’s approach to spirituality and the devotional life? His debt to the Order of St. Benedict is clear but this deep appreciation of monasticism is only one aspect of his thinking. In fact, at the core of this Pope’s teaching, there lies a profoundly apostolic and Christ-centred spirituality which challenges us to foster renewal of a vibrant and solid Catholic devotional life. When we examine this spirituality more closely, we see how for the Pope a key aspect of its application is the devotion to the Sacred heart of Jesus, rooted in tradition but now cast in a new light. It is in the first part of his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, that Benedict sets this tone. Here he places at the centre of the life of faith the experience of relationship with the person of Jesus Christ himself, who loves the world with passion. To recognize this emphasis is important. In his first two encyclicals Benedict chose to call us to a purity of devotion to the person of the Son and his saving love. This shapes his invitation to the Church, in the second part of the encyclical, to mirror Christ’s love in her missionary activity, and then, in his second encyclical Spes Salvi, to spread the hopes of salvation manifested through the self-gift of the Son of God in pouring out his love for the world. In Deus Caritas Est, Benedict does not directly focus on the Sacred Heart devotion. However, it is in a letter released shortly after the encyclical’s publication that he makes the connection between the devotion and his teaching. In this document, addressed to the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, to recall the fiftieth anniversary of the encyclical of Pius XII on the Sacred Heart, Haurietis Aquas, Benedict shows how his teaching on Christian love is given substance in one of the two chief images associated with the devotion. Interestingly, rather than focus on the more widely depicted image of the burning heart itself so familiar to an older generation, the Pope recommends to us the harsher biblical image of the pierced side of Christ from which flowed blood and water. Through reflecting on this, in fact a favourite image in his theological thought, Benedict says: We will be able to know God’s love in Jesus Christ, to experience him, keeping our gaze fixed on him to the point that we live entirely on the experience of his love, so that we can subsequently witness to it to others. In other words, the devotion in itself has a teaching role, reviving in our senses a lived experience of faith in Christ’s love for us, which in turn calls us to witness to Christ. In reflecting on it, we immediately enter into the depth of spirituality rooting the encyclical, for it is this image of the pierced side that the Pope claims is the starting point of that work. By contemplating the pierced side of Christ we can understand the starting point of this encyclical letter: God is love l Jn 4:8. It is there that the truth can be contemplated. It is

from there that our definition of love must begin. In this contemplation the Christian discovers the path along which his live and love must move (DCE 12). At this point it is necessary to digress to explain something of the history of the devotion and the theology behind it, as expressed in particular in Haurietis Aquas, before returning to discuss its specific contemporary relevance, in the light of the insights offered by Pope Benedict. In Haurietis Aquas, Pope Pius XII endorsed a phrase in an encyclical of his predecessor Pope Pius XI, who called the devotion a summary of our religion (HA 15). And he condemned those who saw the devotion as a type of piety nourished not by the soul and mind but by the senses and consequently more suited to the use of women, since it seems to them something not quite suitable for educated men. It was Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690) who became the main and pivotal mover in the long process that led to Pope Pius IX extending the feast to the universal Church in1856, and then to Leo XIII on 11 June 1899 ordering the consecration of the whole of mankind to the Sacred heart. She was granted a number of revelations in the mid 1670s. In one, Christ allowed her to rest her head on his heart. He told her he wanted to make the wonders of his love known to all mankind and that he had chosen her for this work, while in another revelation he asked to be honoured under the figure of his heart of flesh. But the Church does not depend only on the visions of St Margaret Mary when it affirms the very close connection between the form of the devotion paid to the heart of the divine Redeemer and the worship we owe to his love of the Most Holy Trinity for all men (HA 20). The revelations made to St Margaret Mary, Haurietis Aquas argues, brought nothing new into Catholic doctrine. Their importance lays in the fact that Christ, exposing his Sacred Heart, wished in a quite extraordinary way to invite the minds of men to a contemplation of and a devotion to the mystery of God’s merciful love for the human race (HA 97). In other words, the progress of the devotion, which could be traced back to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, stemmed from the fact that it entirely agreed with the nature of Christian piety since it was a devotion of love (HA 96). Christ’s heart, Haurietis Aquas argues, is essentially united to the Person of the divine Word (HA 21) and so it is due that worship of adoration with which the Church honours the person of the Incarnate Son of God himself. Especially pertinently for our present purposes, HA first quotes Aquinas – From the side of Christ there flowed water for cleansing, blood for redeeming. Hence blood is associated with the sacrament of the Eucharist, water with the sacrament of Baptism - and he goes on: What is here written of the side of Christ, opened by the wound from the soldier, should also be said of the heart which was certainly reached by the stab of the lance, since the soldier pierced it precisely to make certain that Jesus Christ crucified was really dead (HA 77, 78). The wound then becomes an expression of God’s spontaneous charity and of Christ’s passionate love (HA 78). These can clearly be seen as the two loves Benedict deals with in the two parts of Deus Caritas Est and we can now return to the thinking of the Pope on the devotion’s relevance to the present day.

The Sacred Heart as he conceives it is not simply one aspect of his spirituality. Rather it is the devotional key to the teaching on Christian life he presents to the faithful of this generation. The image of the pierced side becomes the source of the life of discipleship in a two-fold way. As the Lord tells us, says Benedict, one can become a source from which rivers of living water flow (John 7:37-38). Yet, to become such a source, one must constantly drink anew from the original source, which is Jesus Christ, from whose pierced heart flows the love of God (Jn 19: 34) (DCE 7). So the connection between the Sacred Heart and Pope Benedict’s teaching is clear. But what can this mean to us in our own church context? In many parts of the world, compared to 30-40 years ago, there is a considerable devotional gap in our Catholic life. While many parishes have statues of the Sacred heart, many people have been put off the devotion because it seemed to them to convey a sentimental image of Jesus unconnected with living as a disciple in the world. It is easier to see the value in pastoral programmes of catechesis and the spiritual life which have taken root and brought much new life to our dioceses and parishes. Let us turn to the letter to the Jesuit Fr. General. Here we see that the Pope’s understanding of the Sacred heart includes two key components already present in this traditional devotion, but emphasized a way which can give it new life. One is the connection between knowledge and experience of God’s love. It is obvious, says Benedict, that experience and knowledge cannot be separated, the one refers to the other. The devotion is, like much popular spirituality, predominantly of the senses, focused on an eternal truth which is experienced. The point is to help people not simply know this truth that Christ died for us, but to allow that knowledge to take root within and in a spirit of gratitude. This leads to a second dimension, the call to be apostolic as we join with Christ on his saving mission of love. When we practise this devotion, says Benedict, not only do we recognize God’s love with gratitude but we continue to open ourselves to this love so that our lives are ever more closely patterned upon it… Adoring contemplation of the side pierced by the spear makes us sensitive to God’s salvific will… (and) strengthens us in the desire to take part in his work of salvation, becoming his instruments. Presented in this way, the Sacred Heart is instantly recognizable as an Ignatian devotion, as the Spirit moves us through our experience of gratitude to action in Christ’s name. Far from being sentimental, it calls us to profess a solid faith in our salvation and to live this out as our heart beats with the heart of Christ. The freshness of Benedict’s approach within the context of his teaching on Christian love supports a spirituality which is profoundly experiential and apostolic. This plays an important part in the development of the Pope’s current theological teaching, just as his fresh call to the renewal of devotional life. Such an outward-looking yet sensate vision of the spiritual life can bear much fruit among people searching for a deeply rooted yet missionary Christian identity. One challenge for the Church will be to foster a contemporary spirituality rich in its theological understanding of the Christian disciple’s call to be inflamed by the desire to join him on his mission. Benedict’s appreciation of the Sacred heart devotion can serve as a spur to renewal, which will strengthen the Church in responding to Christ’s call. As we reflect on pastoral planning, perhaps we might also see more clearly how a renewed devotional life conceived on these solid foundations is an essential part of ongoing faith formation, at the centre of an apostolically oriented pastoral theology, and an indispensable aid to a Christ-centred apostolic spirituality.