Haurietis Aquas - On the Sacred Heart

44. The holy Fathers, true witnesses of the divinely revealed doctrine, wonderfully understood what St. Paul the Apostle had quite clearly declared; namely, that the mystery of love was, as it were, both the foundation and the culmination of the Incarnation and the Redemption. For frequently and clearly we can read in their writings that Jesus Christ took a perfect human nature and our weak and perishable human body with the object of providing for our eternal salvation, and of revealing to us in the clearest possible manner that His infinite love for us could express itself in human terms.

45. St. Justin, almost echoing the voice of the Apostle of the Gentiles, writes: "We adore and love the Word born of the unbegotten and ineffable God since He became man for our sake, so that having become a partaker of our sufferings He might provide a remedy for them" (43).

46. St. Basil, the first of the three Cappadocian Fathers declares that the feelings of the senses in Christ were at once true and holy: "It is clear that the Lord did indeed put on natural affections as a proof of His real and not imaginary Incarnation, and that He rejected as unworthy of the Godhead those corrupt affections which defile the purity of our life" (44).

47. Similarly that light of the Church of Antioch, St. John Chrysostom, admits that the emotion of the senses to which the divine Redeemer was subject made obvious the fact that He assumed a human nature complete in all respects: "For if He had not shared our nature He would not have repeatedly been seized with grief" (45).

48. Among the Latin Fathers one may cite those whom the Church today honors as the greatest doctors. Thus St. Ambrose bears witness that the movements and dispositions of the senses, from which the Incarnate Word of (God was not exempt, flow from the hypostatic union as from their natural source: "And therefore He put on a soul and the passions of the soul; for God, precisely because He is God, could not have been disturbed nor could He have died." 46).

49. It was from these very emotions that St. Jerome derived his chief proof that Christ had really put on human nature: "Our Lord, to prove the truth of the manhood He had assumed, experiences real sadness" (47).

50. But St. Augustine, in a special manner, notices the connections that exist between the sentiments of the Incarnate Word and their purpose, man’s redemption. "These affections of human infirmity, even as the human body itself and death, the Lord Jesus put on not out of necessity, but freely out of compassion so that He might transform in Himself His Body, which is the Church of which He deigned to be the Head, that is, His members who are among the faithful and the saints, so that if any of them in the trials of this life should be saddened and afflicted they should not therefore think that they are deprived of His grace. Nor should they consider this sorrow a sin, but a sign of human weakness. Like a choir singing in harmony with the note that has been sounded, so should His Body learn from its Head" (48).

51. More briefly, but no less effectively, do the following passages from St. John Damascene set out the teaching of the Church: "Complete God assumed me completely and complete man is united to complete God so that He might bring salvation to complete man. For what was not assumed could not be healed" (49). "He therefore assumed all that He might sanctify all" (50).

52. However, it must be noted that although these selected passages from Scripture and the Fathers and many similar ones that we have not cited give clear testimony that Jesus Christ was endowed with affections and sense perceptions, and hence that He assumed human nature in order to work for our eternal salvation, yet they never refer those affections to His physical heart in such a way as to point to it clearly as the symbol of His infinite love.

53. Granted that the Evangelists and other sacred writers do not explicitly describe the Heart of our Redeemer, living and throbbing like our own with the power of feeling, and ever throbbing with the emotions and affections of His soul and the glowing charity of His twofold will, yet they often set in their proper light His divine love and the sense emotions which accompany it; that is, desire, joy, weakness, fear and anger, as shown by His face, words or gesture. The face of our adorable Savior was especially the guide, and a kind of faithful reflection, of those emotions which moved His soul in various ways and like repeating waves touched His Sacred Heart and excited its beating. For what is true of human psychology and its effects is valid here also. The Angelic Doctor, relying on ordinary experience, notes: "An emotion caused by anger is conveyed to the external members, and particularly to those members in which the heart’s imprint is more obviously reflected, such as the eyes, the face, and the tongue" (51).

54. For these reasons, the Heart of the Incarnate Word is deservedly and rightly considered the chief sign and symbol of that threefold love with which the divine Redeemer unceasingly loves His eternal Father and all mankind.

55. It is a symbol of that divine love which He shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit but which He, the Word made flesh, alone manifests through a weak and perishable body, since "in Him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (52).

56. It is, besides, the symbol of that burning love which, infused into His soul, enriches the human will of Christ and enlightens and governs its acts by the most perfect knowledge derived both from the beatific vision and that which is directly infused (53).

57. And finally—and this in a more natural and direct way—it is the symbol also of sensible love, since the body of Jesus Christ, formed by the Holy Spirit, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, possesses full powers of feelings and perception, in fact, more so than any other human body (54).

58. Since, therefore, Sacred Scripture and the official teaching of the Catholic faith instruct us that all things find their complete harmony and order in the most holy soul of Jesus Christ, and that He has manifestly directed His threefold love for the securing of our redemption, it unquestionably follows that we can contemplate and honor the Heart of the divine Redeemer as a symbolic image of His love and a witness of our redemption and, at the same time, as a sort of mystical ladder by which we mount to the embrace of "God our Savior" (55).

59. Hence His words, actions, commands, miracles, and especially those works which manifest more clearly His love for us—such as the divine institution of the Eucharist, His most bitter sufferings and death, the loving gift of His holy Mother to us, the founding of the Church for us, and finally, the sending of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and upon us—all these, we say, ought to be looked upon as proofs of His threefold love.

60. Likewise we ought to meditate most lovingly on the beating of His Sacred Heart by which He seemed, as it were, to measure the time of His sojourn on earth until that final moment when, as the Evangelists testify, "crying out with a loud voice ‘It is finished.’, and bowing His Head, He yielded up the Spirit" (56). Then it was that His heart ceased to beat and His sensible love was interrupted until the time when, triumphing over death, He rose from the tomb.

61. But after His glorified body had been re-united to the soul of the divine Redeemer, conqueror of death, His most Sacred Heart never ceased, and never will cease, to beat with calm and imperturbable pulsations. Likewise, it will never cease to symbolize the threefold love with which He is bound to His heavenly Father and the entire human race, of which He has every claim to be the mystical Head.

62. And now, venerable brethren, in order that we may be able to gather from these holy considerations abundant and salutary fruits, we desire to reflect on and briefly contemplate the manifold affections, human and divine, of our Savior Jesus Christ which His Heart made known to us during the course of His mortal life and which It still does and will continue to do for all eternity. From the pages of the Gospel particularly there shines forth for us the light, by the brightness and strength of which we can enter into the secret places of this divine Heart and, with the Apostle of the Gentiles, gaze at "the abundant riches of (God’s) grace, in his bounty towards us in Christ Jesus" (57).

63. The adorable Heart of Jesus Christ began to beat with a love at once human and divine after the Virgin Mary generously pronounced Her "Fiat"; and the Word of God, as the Apostle remarks: "coming into the world, says, ‘Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldst not; but a body thou hast fitted to Me; holocausts for sin did not please thee. Then said I, "Behold I come"; in the head of the book it is written of Me, "that I should do thy will, O God!"‘. . .In which will we are sanctified by the oblation of the body of Jesus Christ once" (58).

64. Likewise was He moved by love, completely in harmony with the affections of His human will and the divine Love, when in the house of Nazareth He conversed with His most sweet Mother and His foster father, St. Joseph, in obedience to whom He performed laborious tasks in the trade of a carpenter.

65. Again, He was influenced by that threefold love, of which we spoke, during His public life: in long apostolic journeys; in the working of innumerable miracles, by which He summoned back the dead from the grave or granted health to all manner of sick persons; in enduring labors; in bearing fatigue, hunger and thirst; in the nightly watchings during which He prayed most lovingly to His Father; and finally, in His preaching and in setting forth and explaining His parables, in those particularly which deal with mercy--the lost drachma, the lost sheep, the prodigal son. By these indeed both by act and by word, as St. Gregory the Great notes, the Heart of God Itself is revealed: "Learn the Heart of God in the words of God, that you may long more ardently for things eternal" (59).

66. But the Heart of Jesus Christ was moved by a more urgent charity when from His lips were drawn words breathing the most ardent love. Thus, to give examples: when He was gazing at the crowds weary and hungry, He exclaimed: "I have compassion upon the crowd" (60); and when He looked down on His beloved city of Jerusalem, blinded by its sins, and so destined for final ruin, He uttered this sentence: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that slays the prophets, and stones them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered together thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldst not!" (61) And His Heart beat with love for His Father and with a holy anger when seeing the sacrilegious buying and selling taking place in the Temple, He rebuked the violators with these words: "It is written: My house shall be called a house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves" (62).

67. But His Heart was moved by a particularly intense love mingled with fear as He perceived the hour of His bitter torments drawing near and, expressing a natural repugnance for the approaching pains and death, He cried out: "Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from Me" (63) And when He was greeted by the traitor with a kiss, in love triumphant united to deepest grief, He addressed to him those words which seem to be the final invitation of His most merciful Heart to the friend who, obdurate in his wicked treachery, was about to hand Him over to His executioners: "Friend, whereto art thou come? Dost thou betray the Son of Man with a kiss?" (64) It was out of pity and the depths of His love that He spoke to the devout women as they wept for Him on His way to the unmerited penalty of the Cross: "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not over Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. . .For if in the green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the dry?" (65)

68. And when the divine Redeemer was hanging on the Cross, He showed that His Heart was strongly moved by different emotions—burning love, desolation, pity, longing desire, unruffled peace. The words spoken plainly indicate these emotions: "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do!" (66) "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" (67) "Amen, I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with Me in paradise" (68). "I thirst"(69). "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit" (70).

69. But who can worthily depict those beatings of the divine Heart, the signs of His infinite love, of those moments when He granted men His greatest gifts: Himself in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, His most holy Mother, and the office of the priesthood shared with us?

70. Even before He ate the Last Supper with His disciples Christ Our Lord, since He knew He was about to institute the sacrament of His body and blood by the shedding of which the new covenant was to be consecrated, felt His heart roused by strong emotions, which He revealed to the Apostles in these words: "With desire have I desired to eat this Pasch with you before I suffer" (71). And these emotions were doubtless even stronger when "taking bread, He gave thanks, and broke, and gave to them, saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you, this do in commemoration of Me.’ Likewise the chalice also, after He had supped, saying, ‘This chalice is the new testament in My blood, which shall be shed for you’" (72).

71. It can therefore be declared that the divine Eucharist, both the sacrament which He gives to men and the sacrifice in which He unceasingly offers Himself from the rising of the sun till the going down thereof" (73), and likewise the priesthood, are indeed gifts of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

72. Another most precious gift of His Sacred Heart is, as we have said, Mary the beloved Mother of God and the most loving Mother of us all. She who gave birth to our Savior according to the flesh and was associated with Him in recalling the children of Eve to the life of divine grace has deservedly been hailed as the spiritual Mother of the whole human race. And so St. Augustine writes of her: "Clearly She is Mother of the members of the Savior (which is what we are), because She labored with Him in love that the faithful who are members of the Head might be born in the Church" (74).