Solemnity of the Sacred Heart (Reprise with Additional Announcement)

Today we celebrate a feast that may seem at first glance to be irrelevant to contemporary life. The Feast of the Sacred Heart developed in part as a response to pre-destinationist theologies which diminished the universality of the gratuitous love of God and consigned many to perdition. But the Church's own theology of grace and freedom points directly to the reality of the human heart -- that center of the human person where God freely speaks himself and human beings respond in ways that are salvific for them and for the rest of the world. It asks us to see all persons as constituted in this way and called to life in and of God. Today's Feast of the Sacred Heart, then, despite the shift in context, asks us to reflect again on the nature of the human heart, to the greatest danger to spiritual or authentically human life the Scriptures identify, and too, on what a contemporary devotion to the Sacred Heart might mean for us.

As I have written here before, the heart is the symbol of the center of the human person. It is a theological term which points first of all to God and to God's activity deep within us. It is not so much that we have a heart and then God comes to dwell there; it is that where [and to the extent] God dwells within us and bears witness to himself, we have a heart. The human heart (not the cardiac muscle but the center of our personhood the Scriptures call heart) is a dialogical event where God speaks, calls, breathes, and sings us into existence and where, in one way and degree or another, we respond to become the people we are [and are called to be]. It is therefore important that our hearts be open and flexible, that they be obedient to the Voice and love of God, and so that they be responsive in all the ways they are summoned to be.

Bearing this in mind it is no surprise that the Scriptures speak in many places about the very worst thing which could befall a human being and her spiritual life. We hear it in the following line from Ezekiel: [[If today you hear [God's] voice, harden not your hearts.]] Many things contribute to such a reaction. We know that love is risky and that it always hurts. Sometimes this hurt is akin to the mystical experience of being pierced by God's love and is a wonderful but difficult experience. Sometimes it is the pain of compassion or empathy or grief. These are often bittersweet experiences, but they are also life-giving. Other times love wounds us in less fruitful ways: we are betrayed by friends or family, we reach out to another in love and are rejected, and a billion smaller losses wound us in ways from which we cannot seem to recover.

In such cases our hearts are not only wounded but become scarred, indurated, less sensitive to pain (or pleasure), stiff, and relatively inflexible. They, quite literally, become "hardened" and we may be fearful and unwilling or even unable to risk further injury. When the Scriptures speak of the "hardening" of our hearts they use the very words medicine uses to speak of the result of serious and prolonged wounding: induration, sclerosis, becoming calloused. Such hardening is self-protective but it also locks us into a world that makes us less capable of responding to love with all of its demands and riskiness. It makes us incapable of suffering well (patiently, fruitfully), or of real selflessness, generosity, or compassion.

It is here that the symbol of the Sacred Heart of Jesus' is instructive and where contemporary devotion to the Sacred Heart can assist us. The Sacred Heart is clearly the place where human and divine are united in a unique way. While we are not called to Daughterhood or to Sonship in the exact same sense of Jesus' (he is only "begotten" Son, we are adopted Sons --- and I use only Sons here because of the prophetic, countercultural sense that term had for women in the early Church along with its derivative nature --- whether male or female we are sharers in Jesus' own Sonship --- we are meant to be expressions of a similar unity and heritage; we are meant to have God as the well spring of life and love at the center of our existence.

Like the Sacred Heart our own hearts are meant to be "externalized" in a sense and (made) transparent to others. They are meant to be wounded by love and deeply touched by the pain of others but not scarred or indurated in that woundedness; they are meant to be compassionate hearts on fire with love and poured out for others --- hearts which are marked by the cross in all of its kenotic (self-emptying) dimensions and therefore too by the joy of ever-new life. The truly human heart is a reparative heart that heals the woundedness of others and empowers them to love as well. Such hearts are hearts that love as God loves, and therefore which do justice. I think that allowing our own hearts to be remade in this way represents an authentic devotion to Jesus' Sacred Heart. There is nothing lacking in relevance or contemporaneity in that!

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Saint Marie's Cathedral, Sheffield UK

It is with real joy that I make the following announcement: Today in the Diocese of Hallam (Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK) Sister Mary Esther Chiboke, a former Little Sister of the Poor, made first vows as a Diocesan Hermit in the hands of Bp Ralph Heskett, CSsR. She is the first C 603 hermit professed in the diocese (those who know Sister Rachel Denton, Er Dio, may know that she transferred to the Diocese of Hallam (Lincolnshire) in 2018). I have worked with Sister M Esther on behalf of her diocese for the past year and with Bp Heskett's approval, will continue accompanying her for the next three years as she moves toward perpetual profession. 

Sister chose today's solemnity as the day she wanted to make her profession and the love by which God makes her capable of ever greater love and joy -- the Sacred Heart by which God daily transforms and enlarges Esther's own heart --- is central to her sensibilities, spirituality, and work/ministry. She could not have chosen a more appropriate day for this initial eremitic commitment. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers as she begins this stage of her eremitical journey.