The Divine Mercy of the Sacred Heart

An image of the Sacred Heart similar to what hung in my father's store 

In preparation for the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart I decided to put a few scattered thoughts together regarding this special devotion. 

I've written before about my devotion deprived childhood. I went back to see where I wrote about it so I could link to the post, but I gave up the search. After six years and 774 posts (counting this one) I've lost track a bit of what I wrote where and when. Since I don't want to risk repeating myself unnecessarily, you'll just have to take my word on it: My, immediate post-Vatican II, generation wasn't schooled in the popular devotions of the Church the way previous generations were.  

Which brings me to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Growing up I saw the image in statue and portrait form, sure enough. We had an image of the Sacred Heart hanging high on the wall in my father's produce store, along with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, centrally located right across from the front doors, greeting everyone as they entered. I knew that the image was of Jesus, but I was always kind of befuddled by the exposed heart, looking not quite like a caricature, but not quite realistic either - kind of half way between the carnal and the cartoon like. It was never explained at the time, because I think my parents took for granted that it would have been explained in CCD (old school parish religious education classes, for you younger folk), and we weren't getting it in CCD because it wasn't a part of the curriculum. As I've said before, popular devotions were out of favor back in the '70's, so the image of Jesus' exposed heart, bound by the crown of thorns, bursting with light and flames was a bit off putting to me. 

At the same time I was fascinated by this bit of iconography, and did do some reading up on it when I was older, learning about the 12 promises made to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. Later, after I entered the minor seminary I read Cardinal Ratzinger's book Behold the Pierced One, which showed the continued relevance of the devotion in the face of contemporary objections. It had been a fabulously popular devotion for centuries, but fell almost completely out of favor after the Council due to the belief of some that it was unscriptural. You see, the heart itself is not a prominent biblical image. We who were brought up in the West identify the heart as the seat of emotions, but in the Bible, specifically the Old Testament, the kidneys, located deep in the interior of the person was so identified. It kind of makes sense if you sit and think about it, but nonetheless, culturally speaking, we can understand that flaming kidneys wouldn't quite have the same impact on us as a heart does, to put it mildly (it certainly wouldn't have made any sense to St. Margaret Mary).  Short book that it is, it has been better than a quarter century since I read it, so I'm foggy on the details. All I know is that after reading the future Benedict XVI's modest treatise that image of Jesus' pierced heart, aflame and overflowing with divine love captured me once and for all. 

This was because in the Sacred Heart I saw the interconnection of Jesus' humanity and divinity most clearly.  We see Jesus the Son of God demonstrated by the miracle accounts, but otherwise the scriptures are spare, concise; defying any substantive psychological analysis of Jesus the man. Mark, in particular, describes Jesus' emotional state at times, but otherwise it's easy to walk away from the New Testament accounts with the image of a rather stoic savior.  The Sacred Heart offers us a glimpse at a passionate man, deeply in love with His people. It is a love that is at once collective - for all humanity, but at the same time very particular. He knows each of us by name. He has counted every hair of our head. He known what is the best in us, but He also knows the evil that we are capable of - yet He loves us all the same. He desperately wants us to respond to His call, to accept his love, but Jesus won't force Himself on us. He pines like an unrequited lover when He is rejected, but never with bitterness. He loves, even to the point of giving His Body and Blood in sacrifice. He loves with a human passion, yet with the infinite power of God. 

That Jesus would appear to St. Margaret Mary and speak of the love in His heart for us makes tremendous sense. He was speaking to her, a simple yet devoted daughter, in a language she could understand (and I'm not talking about French). By extension, He was speaking to the entire culture, and while the heart may not be a scriptural image of consequence, that God is Love, and that His love is passionate, is. Jesus was going to use whatever means necessary to get that vital message across. Unfortunately we missed the forest for the trees, getting hung up on, quite frankly, an esoteric detail and missing the larger, obvious message. 

Over the past twenty years we have seen the rise of another popular devotion in the Church - the Divine Mercy. It looks similar to the Sacred Heart in many ways, and some see it as a rival to that older devotion. There has been objections to the Divine Mercy among some pastors and professional theologians as well. I heard one priest complain that it's a spiritual regression: a pre-Vatican II atavistic throwback promoted by "that Polish pope." I'll leave the meaning of the anti-Polish crack to your own surmising, but the objection overall is motivated by the assumption that the Council either discouraged or outright eliminated popular devotions, which is simply not true. Though the roots of the Divine Mercy go back to a time when the Sacred Heart was still very popular, I've often wondered if God wasn't anticipating the objections to the older devotion and sort of saying, "Okay, let's see'm say that My mercy isn't biblical." So, When the Sacred Heart fell out of favor, here's the Divine Mercy to pickup where it left off. 

And here we need to make an important point: the Divine Mercy doesn't replace the Sacred Heart. The two devotions compliment each other. The Sacred Heart brings us deep into the psychological interior of Jesus. It shows us His motivation for going to the cross for us. As Pope Benedict would highlight in his encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, in Jesus we see eros and agape, the passionate and the unconditional forms of love as defined by the ancient Greeks, perfectly balanced. The passion He has or us (eros) is kept from being a selfish desire by his universal, unconditional love (agape), which in turn is kept from being impersonal and cold by the presence of eros. What then breaks forth from deep inside His very core is the Divine Mercy that is showered upon humanity. St. Faustina described Jesus' love (the Sacred Heart) as the flower and His Divine Mercy as its fruit. 

The irony of all this personally is that even though I was taken up with the Sacred Heart a long time ago, I never really practiced the devotion with any regularity. On the other hand, I was one of those unsure about the Divine Mercy, coming to it in only the last few years, but now the chaplet is a regular part of my prayer life. 

While the Divine Mercy has become important to me, I am very conscious of what lays behind it. Jesus' mercy bursts forth from a heart on fire with love. He wants us all to be saved, and His heart aches, longing for our return after we have sinned. Jesus is not some well intentioned, but distant philanthropist who loves humanity as an idea, but can't stand people in the flesh. He took on a human heart, not because He needed to, but because we needed to know unambiguously that God is love. He came and made His dwelling among us, sharing our joys and pains. He wasn't play acting, those emotions were real. The Sacred Heart of Jesus makes visible in invisible tenderness and passion of God. Jesus went to the cross not simply out of duty. Jesus was obedient, yes, but His was not a servile, grudging compliance to the Father's will. It was a loving embrace of humanity, but more powerfully a loving embrace of you and me on a personal level. Because of that self sacrificing love I know what Mercy is. Because the Second Person of the Trinity took on a human heart, I can see, touch and taste the invisible Divine Mercy everyday.