Pope’s new encyclical invokes Sacred Heart as remedy to ‘loss of desire’ and ‘fanaticism’ afflicting modern world

Pope Francis in his latest encyclical has stressed the social dimension of God’s love, saying the ancient devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus must translate into care of others while serving as a remedy to “outdated” Church structures and various forms of “fanaticism” around the world.

“In a world where everything is bought and sold, people’s sense of their worth appears increasingly to depend on what they can accumulate with the power of money,” the Pope said in “Dilexit Nos – Encyclical Letter on the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ” published 24 October.

The Holy Father explains that as a society: “We are constantly being pushed to keep buying, consuming and distracting ourselves, held captive to a demeaning system that prevents us from looking beyond our immediate and petty needs.”

Christ’s love, however, Pope Francis says, “has no place in this perverse mechanism…Christ’s love can give a heart to our world and revive love wherever we think that the ability to love has been definitively lost”.

The Pope notes that the Church similarly is also in need of this love, “lest the love of Christ be replaced with outdated structures and concerns, excessive attachment to our own ideas and opinions, and fanaticism in any number of forms”.

These forms, rather than leading one to God, “end up taking the place of the gratuitous love of God that liberates, enlivens, brings joy to the heart and builds communities,” he says.

Dilexit Nos – meaning “He loved us” – addresses the topic of the human and divine love of Jesus Christ, underlining the social dimension of Christ’s love and caring for others as an extension of a personal, intimate relationship of love with God.

It is Pope Francis’s fourth encyclical, following Lumen Fidei in 2013, largely written by his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI but published by Francis after Benedict’s resignation; Laudato Si’ in 2015, and Fratelli Tutti in 2020.

Divided into five chapters, the latest encyclical offers an extended reflection on the image of the heart in Christian spirituality, and the development of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus throughout the history of Christian spirituality.

In what the Pope describes as an “age of superficiality, rushing frenetically from one thing to another without really knowing why, and ending up as insatiable consumers and slaves to the mechanisms of a market unconcerned about the deeper meaning of our lives”, he said there is a need to rediscover the importance of the heart and the symbolism attached to it.

He notes that the heart represents the deepest part of the human being and is the centre of body and soul, standing for something that goes beyond mere outward appearances and is a place of truth, where no secrets are kept.

In a “liquid” world, humanity must once again make space for the heart and for self-reflection in a society “of serial consumers who live from day to day, dominated by the hectic pace and bombarded by technology, lacking in the patience needed to engage in the processes that an interior life by its very nature requires,” Pope Francis says.

He emphasises that a focus on the heart must go beyond the individual level and must also spill into the international political and economic spheres.

“All our actions need to be put under the ‘political rule’ of the heart. In this way, our aggressiveness and obsessive desires will find rest in the greater good that the heart proposes and in the power of the heart to resist evil,” he says.

Stressing the heart as a place capable of uniting fragmentation caused by individualism, he says a society “dominated by narcissism and self-centredness will increasingly become ‘heartless’”.

He warns: “This will lead in turn to the ‘loss of desire’, since as other persons disappear from the horizon we find ourselves trapped within walls of our own making, no longer capable of healthy relationships. As a result, we also become incapable of openness to God.”

Pope Francis says the spiritual implications for this focus on the heart include a growth in one’s relationship with God and a uniting and reconciling of “differing minds and wills”.

In the second chapter, the Pope reflects on Jesus’s own actions and words of love as described in scripture, explaining that the Gospels are full of instances when “Christ shows that God is closeness, compassion and tender love”.

“If we find it hard to trust others because we have been hurt by lies, injuries and disappointments, the Lord whispers in our ear: ‘Take heart, son!’; ‘Take heart, daughter!’ He encourages us to overcome our fear and to realise that, with him at our side, we have nothing to lose,” he says.

There is never a reason to distrust God, the Pope continues, noting that in scripture Jesus was constantly attentive to people’s personal problems and needs.

“Whenever we feel that everyone ignores us, that no one cares what becomes of us, that we are of no importance to anyone, he remains concerned for us,” the Pope says.

“Jesus was not indifferent to the daily cares and concerns of people”, rather, the Pope adds, he was moved and showed compassion and even anger, grief and joy.

While this might seem to “smack of pious sentimentalism”, the Pope insists that “it is supremely serious and of decisive importance, and finds its most sublime expression in Christ crucified”.

“The cross is Jesus’s most eloquent word of love. A word that is not shallow, sentimental or merely edifying. It is love, sheer love,” he says.

Pope Francis in the third chapter focuses on devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus as involving the entirety of his person, human and divine.

He clarifies that while the image of the Sacred Heart is venerated, it is Christ alone who is worshipped “in his divinity and his plenary humanity, so that we may be embraced by his human and divine love”.

The acknowledgement of the human and divine aspects of Christ’s love, Pope Francis says, is a summons “to a personal relationship of encounter and dialogue” and which becomes more meaningful when Christ is contemplated in both his divinity and humanity.

Pope Francis pointed to the Eucharist as the real presence of Christ to be worshipped and which he says is a remedy to the forms of hatred, selfishness and indifference that can often occupy the heart.

He stresses the trinitarian nature of Jesus’s love, and refers to previous papal teachings on devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, quoting predecessors dating back to Leo XIII, Pius XI, Pius XII, and up to Saint John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Though an ancient devotion, “it constantly needs to be enriched, deepened and renewed through meditation, the reading of the Gospel and growth in spiritual maturity,” the Pope says.

Referring to various saints who claimed to have visions and mystical experiences involving the heart of Christ, the Pope clarifies that belief in these is not necessary for Christians, but they remain sources of encouragement that are “greatly beneficial” to the spiritual life.

Calling the Eucharist “the merciful and ever-present love of the heart of Christ” that invites believers to union with him, the Pope urges that devotion to the Eucharist ought to increase, especially in modern society.

“Amid the frenetic pace of today’s world and our obsession with free time, consumption and diversion, cell phones and social media, we forget to nourish our lives with the strength of the Eucharist.”

Though it is not required, the Pope explains, he urges believers to spend time in Eucharistic adoration.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, he says, is a response to ancient heresies such as Jansenism, which emphasised divine grace but negated human free will.

He cautions that even within the Church now, “a baneful Jansenist dualism has re-emerged in new forms”.

“We are also seeing a proliferation of varied forms of religiosity that have nothing to do with a personal relationship with the God of love, but are new manifestations of a disembodied spirituality,” he says.

This trend, he warns: “has gained renewed strength in recent decades, but it is a recrudescence of that Gnosticism which proved so great a spiritual threat in the early centuries of Christianity because it refused to acknowledge the reality of the salvation of the flesh.

“For this reason, I turn my gaze to the heart of Christ and I invite all of us to renew our devotion to it.”

The Pope voices hope that a renewed focus on the Sacred Heart of Jesus “will also appeal to today’s sensitivities and thus help us to confront the dualisms, old and new, to which this devotion offers an effective response”.

Devotion to the heart of Christ also frees believers from what the Pope says is “another kind of dualism” in communities and among pastors that are “excessively caught up in external activities, structural reforms that have little to do with the Gospel, obsessive reorganisation plans, worldly projects, secular ways of thinking and mandatory programs”.

The result, the Pope says, “is often a Christianity stripped of the tender consolations of faith, the joy of serving others, the fervour of personal commitment to mission, the beauty of knowing Christ and the profound gratitude born of the friendship he offers and the ultimate meaning he gives to our lives”.

The result, he says, is the expression “of an illusory and disembodied otherworldliness” and cautioned that “[o]nce we succumb to these attitudes, so widespread in our day, we tend to lose all desire to be cured of them”.

As a result, the Pope urges the Church to a renewed reflection on the love of Christ as represented in the Sacred Heart.

In the next two chapters, the Pope reflects on Jesus’s love as quenching the thirst of humanity and as being personally involved in the plight of others, and he draws on scripture and the writings of various saints.

“We need once more to take up the word of God and to realise, in doing so, that our best response to the love of Christ’s heart is to love our brothers and sisters. There is no greater way for us to return love for love,” the Holy Father says.

Love for one’s neighbour “is not simply the fruit of our own efforts; it demands the transformation of our selfish hearts”.

Pope Francis notes that Jesus throughout scripture showed special love to the poor and marginalised, and that this priority “has changed the face of the world” and “given life to institutions that take care of those who find themselves in disadvantaged conditions”.

This love, he says, rejects a “structure of sin” which he argues has impacted social development and is frequently part of “a dominant mind-set that considers normal or reasonable what is merely selfishness and indifference”, and thereby “then gives rise to social alienation”.

“It is not only a moral norm that leads us to expose and resist these alienated social structures and to support efforts within society to restore and consolidate the common good. Rather, it is our conversion of heart that imposes the obligation to repair these structures,” the Pope explains.

He also stressed the importance of making reparation and asking for forgiveness for one’s wrongs as part of this love, saying forgiveness heals relationships and touches the heart.

A heart capable of compunction, he says, will then “grow in fraternity and solidarity”.

“Acts of love of neighbour, with the renunciation, self-denial, suffering and effort that they entail, can only be such when they are nourished by Christ’s own love,” he explains, adding that even the smallest work of mercy glorifies the heart of Christ and “displays all its grandeur”.

Christians are called to bring love to the world,” Pope Francis says, adding that the Christian message is attractive “when experienced and expressed in its totality: not simply as a refuge for pious thoughts or an occasion for impressive ceremonies”.

“What kind of worship would we give to Christ if we were to rest content with an individual relationship with him and show no interest in relieving the sufferings of others or helping them to live a better life?” the Pope asks.

Likewise, he questions: “Would it please the heart that so loved us, if we were to bask in a private religious experience while ignoring its implications for the society in which we live?”

Christ’s heart also has a missionary dimension, the Pope says, and as such, Christians must bear witness to Christ and to his love in the world.

He draws the encyclical to a close by noting that its contents illustrate how his previous encyclicals Laudato Si and Fratelli Tutti are “not unrelated to our encounter with the love of Jesus Christ”.

“It is by drinking of that same love that we become capable of forging bonds of fraternity, of recognising the dignity of each human being, and of working together to care for our common home,” the Holy Father concludes.

Photo: Pope Francis during the weekly general audience at St Peter’s square in the Vatican, Vatican City State, 23 October 2024. (Photo by TIZIANA FABI/AFP via Getty Images.)

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