Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is not unheard of, but also not especially common among Anglicans. Frankly, these days, one doesn’t find too much of it among Catholics either. I don’t have any particular devotion to the Sacred Heart, but I do find it a fruitful locus of reflection as I consider what it is to be saved by Jesus. And so, in light of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (the third Friday after Pentecost in the General Roman Calendar), I offer a few fragmentary ruminations on the theme. Opening this ecumenical, liturgical, and devotional window may allow vistas heretofore unseen.
Though he appears in my syllabi with some regularity, I rarely have recourse to the theology of Karl Rahner. I tend to gravitate instead to his Jesuit confrères Henri de Lubac and Bernard Lonergan. But I recall being struck, when I was first acquainted with this titan of 20th-century Catholic theology, by how many of his most insightful essays—such as his widely read “On the Theology of the Symbol”—have reflection on devotion to the Sacred Heart as their starting point.
I think this tells us two things. The first is that Rahner was frequently perplexed by what it could mean to have a devotion to the heart of Jesus, particularly in the context of a modern world come of age. He wrote about it so often because it presented a niggling problem to consider. So, any of us who find it odd perhaps also find ourselves in good company. The second, more significant, thing Rahner’s frequent recourse to the topic teaches is that for all his perplexity, he also found it a rewarding and worthwhile theme to explore.
Consider the lyrical concluding paragraph to his essay, “‘Behold This Heart!’ Preliminaries to a Theology of Devotion to the Sacred Heart”:
We must know what heart means and what an immeasurable weight the word “heart” already has in itself, if we wish to speak of the heart of the God-man and in adoration acknowledge his grace. Only then can one begin to say: “Behold this heart!” Only then can it dawn upon us what it means when we hear the news: the eternal Logos of God has a human heart, he risked the adventure of a human heart, until, pierced by the sin of the world, it had flowed out, until it had suffered to the end on the Cross the uselessness and powerlessness of his love and had become thereby the eternal heart of the world. Since that moment the word “heart” is not only a word which affects man in the core of his being, but a word which can no longer fail to take its place in the eternal praise of God itself and in it in the centre of it—denotes also the heart of a man. Many words will be reduced to silence because what they mean is not worth speaking about. But there are human words which, because they mean human things, can properly be said only in a human way. And if they mean something human which belongs eternally to God himself, then such human words are words of eternity which men can never cease to utter, either here or in eternity. And to these words of earthly beginning and eternal ending belongs the word which God will still say to us men in all eternity: “Behold this heart, which has so loved men.”
In these sentences, Rahner hits upon at least two vital theological themes, both of which touch upon our humanity. One is the way we depend upon symbolic realities. In this he hearkens all the way back to Augustine of Hippo’s De Doctrina, which turns upon the distinction between things and signs. To be human is to be bound up within an economy of signs. Centuries later, Thomas Aquinas would explain that it is because of this sign-dependent character that humans need the sacraments for our salvation, not because God could not save us otherwise, but because using sacraments as God’s instruments for our salvation best honors the sort of creatures that God has made us to be (ST 3.61.1).
Because this is how God has made us to be, because we are symbolic creatures, constituted, conditioned, and dependent upon signs, symbols are not mere ornamentation, but affect us at the core of who we are. Thus, the heart is not merely, not even principally, the muscle whose systole and diastole circulate blood through our bodies, but rather the core of who we are, the depths of our being, the seat of identity and love.
This then sets the stage for the second theme: the reality of the Incarnation. God loves us with all God’s heart, with all the fullness of God’s being, from the depths of who God is, and with everything God has to give. And because the Word has become flesh, this infinite divine love is also the love of a human heart. Jesus loves us with all his heart, and has done so to the point of also having as his own one of those blood-pumping muscles in his chest.
This lies at the origins of the theological virtue of charity: an elevation and perfection of our natural loves so that charity participates in the supernatural love that is God. In Jesus, a human love beats with the love of God, with infinite love for humans. In Jesus, a human heart loves God with divine love. In Jesus, we are invited into this love, which is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us (Rom. 5:5).
Thus, the Sacred Heart is at once a testimony to the reality of the Incarnation, to the radicality of the divine love for us in Christ and the Holy Spirit, and an invitation, a summons. In perceiving how greatly God has loved us, we are caught up into that love so that we too can share in it. However imperfectly we do this, still really do we do it. If we did not, I can’t grasp what salvation would even mean.
In other words, if we are merely forgiven, or receive a merely imputed righteousness that does not issue in love, then “heaven” would be a mere extension of business as usual, and finally indistinguishable from hell. If we are not transformed such that we love God, then being eternally in his presence is a decidedly unpleasant prospect. If we are not transformed such that we love what God loves—our neighbors and the whole of creation—then we do not finally love God.
Thus, we are invited to love as God loves, and we are invited to love what and whom God loves. This is a love that knows no bounds. In our polarized age, in our age of genuine disagreements, even enmities, we are tempted to place restrictions on our love. The church loves you (terms and conditions apply). Or to pervert Augustine’s ordo amoris in order to lessen the burden of our obligation to love. But the love of God, the love that beats in the human heart of Jesus, the love poured into our hearts, has no restrictions, restricts no borders, dithers with no qualifications, and puts the lie to all our attempts to diminish or withhold that love.
I’m not telling you that you need to cultivate a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. But I will insist that if we would be faithful to him, we must cultivate that disposition at which such devotion aims, limitless love expressed by human hearts. And I’ll also suggest that a bit of contemplation of what it means for the God of Love to take as his own and love with a human heart, just like yours and mine, might aid in that journey.
Eugene R. Schlesinger, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University. He is the author of several books, including Salvation in Henri de Lubac: Divine Grace, Human Nature, and the Mystery of the Cross (Notre Dame, 2023). Schlesinger served as Editor of Covenant, 2019-2024.
