A Heart that Burns with Compassion

Last week, the Catholic Church universally celebrated the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In addition, the U.S. Catholic Bishops consecrated the United States to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The significance of this feast and consecration brings into focus Christ’s humanity and the need for us, as his followers, to recall the fountain of his human yet perfect love. We do this especially on the Feast Day and through consecration, which continues throughout the month of June.  
 
Why this devotion?
A devotion to the Sacred Heart contemplates the divine love of Christ as revealed through His human heart. It is not merely a symbol but points to the physical reality of Jesus' human flesh and His genuine human emotions and feelings. In Him, especially in His Heart, we see that Jesus experienced every human emotion you and I do. However, combined with His divinity, His love, especially His love for us as expressed through His Heart, is boundless.
 
The Church teaches that Jesus’ human heart, with all its affections, is hypostatically united to the divine Person of the Word. This means His divine love is inseparable from His human love. Another way to put it is that His human heart belongs to and is owned by the Divine Person of the Word (the Son of God). His human emotions, including His boundless love, are elevated by His divine nature. When we gaze upon the Sacred Heart in imagery, we contemplate the very heart of God, made visible and tangible in the person of Jesus Christ.
 
Reciprocating the love of his sacred heart
How can we give back to Christ Jesus this immeasurable and infinite love? The Sacred Heart devotion is meant to guide this response by concretely expressing the command to love God wholeheartedly. Pope Pius XII connects this devotion to the commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength.” (Haurietis Aquas, 111)
 
Pope John Paul II highlights that contemplating the Heart of Jesus in the Eucharist spurs the faithful to charity and apostolic mission. As such, “return love for love” often means:

• visiting Christ in the Eucharist,
• making a simple act of love during adoration (“I give myself to you; teach me to love as you love”), and
• receiving Communion with a deliberate intention to love God and neighbor more faithfully.

 
How did this devotion develop?
The devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has deep roots in Sacred Scripture. The understanding of God’s profound love for humanity, symbolized by the “heart,” is present in both the Old and New Testaments.   In the Old Testament, God chose Israel out of love and formed a covenant with them, asking for their love in return: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord. Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with thy whole heart, and thy whole soul, and thy whole strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). 
 
The prophets, like Hosea, speak of God's tender compassion, portraying Him as a loving parent who draws His people with “cords of kindness, with bands of love,” even when they are unfaithful (Hosea 11:1, 3-4). This shows that the concept of God’s “heart” burning with compassion is ancient.
 
In the New Testament, this divine love is fully revealed in Jesus Christ. The Sacred Heart, pierced on the cross, is seen as the ultimate sign of this love, fulfilling the truth that “God is love” (1 John 4:8) and that He “loved us and sent His Son to be the expiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). 
 
 
St. Margaret Mary Alacoque & the Catholic Church
 The devotion to the Sacred Heart gained prominence through private revelations, particularly those of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in the 17th century. Jesus is reported to have appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in a series of apparitions from December 1673 through June 1675. The essence of these apparitions is a personal, ardent “declaration of love” from Christ, intended to draw people into union with his merciful love and to respond to that love with love, trust, and reparation expressed in concrete acts. Pope Francis wrote in 2024, “As a result, the Church, after careful discernment, recognized the spiritual fruits of this devotion and officially approved and promoted it” (Dilexit Nos).
 
Throughout the centuries, various popes have deepened the Church’s understanding of the Sacred Heart. Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical Haurietis Aquas, explained that this devotion is essentially a devotion to the divine and human love of the Incarnate Word and to the love by which the Father and the Holy Spirit care for sinful humanity. More recently, St. Pope John Paul II described the Sacred Heart as hiding “in a human way the mystery of God’s eternal love,” and Pope Benedict XVI highlighted how the “heart of God burns with compassion.” Pope Francis has also emphasized that in gazing upon the Lord’s heart, we contemplate a physical reality, His human flesh, which enables Him to possess genuine human emotions and feelings, albeit fully transformed by His divine love.
 
So, the devotion developed from scriptural roots and mystical experiences and has been continuously affirmed and enriched by the Church’s Magisterium, always pointing to the infinite, compassionate love of God revealed in Jesus Christ.