Pope Francis’ encyclical Dilexit Nos: Sacred Heart is ‘incarnate synthesis of the Gospel’

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Pope Francis’ encyclical Dilexit Nos: Sacred Heart is ‘incarnate synthesis of the Gospel’
Pope Francis’ new encyclical, entitled ‘Dilexit Nos,’ calls for a renewed devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, emphasizing the need to develop a personal relationship with Jesus as a counter to the distractions of the modern world.



Pope Francis delivers a speech at Laeken castel on September 27, 2024, in Brussels, Belgium
Photo by Sébastien Courdji/Getty Images

Oct 24, 2024
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis has released a new encyclical on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, highlighting the Church’s wealth of teaching on the devotion, and recommending a renewal of traditional acts of piety and “consolation” to the Sacred Heart, which are born out of a recognition of one’s sins.

Divided into an introduction and five subsequent chapters, Dilexit Nos is “on the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ.” The encyclical is lengthy at 40 pages and with some 227 footnotes.

In his introductory paragraph, Francis points to the Scriptures to say that “nothing can ever ‘separate us’ from that love,” meaning the love of the Sacred Heart.

His text deals with the heart itself, before moving to the mystery of the Sacred Heart, then how the Church has fostered this devotion through Her teachings. In the final two chapters, Francis points to “personal spiritual experience and communal missionary commitment” in relation to the Sacred Heart.

The text is full of quotations from the Church’s vast wealth of writings on the Sacred Heart, and Francis makes great use of the teachings of the Fathers, saints, and popes. He also makes an earnest recommendation of renewing the practice of devotions such as the First Friday, and Eucharistic adoration.

In comparison to Pius XII’s 1956 encyclical on the Sacred Heart, Haurietis Aquas, which is replete with reference to sin and the wounds it causes the Sacred Heart, Dilexit Nos does not emphasize as much of the impacts of sin until near the end of the encyclical. In the closing chapters, Francis makes extensive commentary on the need to unite oneself to the Sacred and suffering Heart of Christ in order to make reparation and atonement for failings against God.

Similar to his 2023 apostolic exhortation on St. Thérèse, Dilexit Nos immediately strikes the reader as far more theological than much of the Pope’s other writings, and is replete with quotations from the Church’s history rather than from Francis himself, as has been the norm in his previous writings.


Importance of the Heart

While Pius XII’s 1956 encyclical on the Sacred Heart moves straight to a theological discourse, Francis dwells in his first chapter – “The Importance of the Heart” – on an understanding of the heart in itself.

He decried how modern society lives in a “liquid” world 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.”

“The failure to make room for the heart, as distinct from our human powers and passions viewed in isolation from one another, has resulted in a stunting of the idea of a personal centre, in which love, in the end, is the one reality that can unify all the others,” Francis wrote.

The heart, he said, “is what sets me apart, shapes my spiritual identity and puts me in communion with other people.”

Expanding on how the current world is fostering a disconnect between the heart and reality, Francis posited the heart as the way for man to be truly man: “If love reigns in our heart, we become, in a complete and luminous way, the persons we are meant to be, for every human being is created above all else for love. In the deepest fibre of our being, we were made to love and to be loved.”

Living in accordance with proper human dignity requires “the help of God’s love,” wrote Francis, as Christ’s Sacred Heart “is a blazing furnace of divine and human love and the most sublime fulfilment to which humanity can aspire.”

The Pontiff also pointed to St. John Henry Newman’s famous motto, “cor ad cor loquitur,” saying that the saint understood that “the Lord saves us by speaking to our hearts from his Sacred Heart.”

This realization led him, the distinguished intellectual, to recognize that his deepest encounter with himself and with the Lord came not from his reading or reflection, but from his prayerful dialogue, heart to heart, with Christ, alive and present.

Drawing from a 1998 Angelus address by Pope John Paul II, Francis closed the chapter noting that that the “Sacred Heart is the unifying principle of all reality, since ‘Christ is the heart of the world, and the paschal mystery of his death and resurrection is the centre of history, which, because of him, is a history of salvation.’”


Actions and words of love

Francis’ second chapter deals more briefly with the manner of Christ’s love for mankind, drawing from Gospel passages to highlight Christ’s compassion.

“The heart of Christ, as the symbol of the deepest and most personal source of his love for us, is the very core of the initial preaching of the Gospel,” he wrote. “It stands at the origin of our faith, as the wellspring that refreshes and enlivens our Christian beliefs.”

The divine call to unite oneself with God (Jn 15:4) is a call to the Sacred Heart, commented Francis. It also contains the call to follow Christ to the cross, since “[t]he cross is Jesus’ most eloquent word of love,” said Francis.

He added that understanding Christ’s salvific death is central to building a relationship with God, just as it was for St. Paul: “Christ’s self-offering on the cross became the driving force in Paul’s life, yet it only made sense to him because he knew that something even greater lay behind it: the fact that ‘he loved me.’”


The heart that has loved so greatly

Linking to his remarks in the first chapter on the heart being a symbol of the entire person, Francis wrote that devotion to the Sacred Heart is fostered by the Church as being devotion to “the whole Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, represented by an image that accentuates his heart.”

The heart “speaks to us of the flesh and of earthly realities,” he said, adding how the heart is the “symbol” of God’s love.

Francis drew from the Church Fathers, along with saints who have written through the Church’s history on the Sacred Heart. But he also posited how Christ’s love from the Sacred Heart is “threefold” – being an “infinite divine love,” a human love, and a “sensible love.”

These three loves are “not separate, parallel or disconnected, but together act and find expression in a constant and vital unity,” he added, drawing on themes found in Pius XII’s encyclical on the Sacred Heart, Haurietis Aquas.

He also expounded on the link between devotion to the Sacred Heart and the Blessed Trinity, saying that “Christ does not expect us simply to remain in Him” but points to the Triune God.

The Church being cognizant of the beauty of this devotion has been visible, said Francis, by the constant teaching on the Sacred Heart which has continued to this day. He noted how recent popes have proposed the devotion as a necessary response to the various crises of each successive age as it is “an excessively privileged” means “granted us by the Holy Spirit for encountering the love of Christ.”

“Devotion to Christ’s heart is essential for our Christian life to the extent that it expresses our openness in faith and adoration to the mystery of the Lord’s divine and human love,” wrote Francis. “In this sense, we can once more affirm that the Sacred Heart is a synthesis of the Gospel.”

He recommended the traditional practices such as the First Friday devotions, consecration to the Sacred Heart, and Eucharistic adoration.

Drawing also from St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Francis recommended the brief aspiration: “Jesus I trust in you.” “No other words are needed,” he said.


A love that gives itself as a drink

The fourth, and longest chapter, draws from Sacred Scripture once more along with the Church’s wealth of saintly writings on the Sacred Heart, in the theme of the “personal spiritual experience.”

Francis summarizes that the “pierced heart of Christ embodies all God’s declarations of love present in the Scriptures. That love is no mere matter of words; rather, the open side of his Son is a source of life for those whom he loves, the fount that quenches the thirst of his people.”

He quotes from Saints Ambrose, Augustine, Bernard, and Bonaventure, before moving to the testimony of canonized male and female religious.

St. Catherine of Siena, he wrote, describes how “the open heart of Christ enables us to have a lively personal encounter with his boundless love,” while St. Getrude he quoted as recounting that the devotion to the Sacred Heart is one especially for the times of an “aging and lukewarm world.”

The devotional writings and teachings of Saints Francis de Sales, Jane de Chantal, Margaret Mary Alacoque, Claude de La Colombière, Charles de Foucald, and Thérèse of Lisieux are all further quoted by Francis.

So too are a number of Jesuit saints, along with more recently canonized members of the Church Triumphant such as St. Padre Pio. The Sacred Heart devotion, writes Francis, “reappears in the spiritual journey of many saints, all quite different from each other; in every one of them, the devotion takes on new hues.”

He also made particular reference of the sufferings endured by Christ and the “natural” desire of Catholic faithful to respond with love to the Sacred Heart which suffered so much for mankind:

The heart of the risen Lord preserves the signs of that complete self-surrender, which entailed intense sufferings for our sake. It is natural, then, that the faithful should wish to respond not only to this immense outpouring of love, but also to the suffering that the Lord chose to endure for the sake of that love.

In light of this, Francis recommend a renewed practice of offering “consolation” to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Making one of the very few references to sin in the text, Francis noted that sin is another basis for fostering such acts of reparation to God: “Add the recognition of our own sins, which Jesus took upon his bruised shoulders, and our inadequacy in the face of that timeless love, which is always infinitely greater.”

He further highlighted the “inseparable and mutually enriching aspects” of the mystery of Christ and the Sacred Heart, namely, “union with Christ in his suffering and of the strength, consolation and friendship that we enjoy with him in his risen life.”

The natural desire to console Christ, which begins with our sorrow in contemplating what he endured for us, grows with the honest acknowledgment of our bad habits, compulsions, attachments, weak faith, vain goals and, together with our actual sins, the failure of our hearts to respond to the Lord’s love and his plan for our lives. This experience proves purifying, for love needs the purification of tears that, in the end, leave us more desirous of God and less obsessed with ourselves.


Love for Love

While the fourth chapter focused on the personal relationship with the Sacred Heart, Francis devoted his fifth chapter to a collective style devotion and union with Christ. Drawing once more from Scripture and from the Church’s prior teaching.

Mentioning that the devotion can foster “fraternity,” Francis drew from John Paul II to note that collective reparation to the Sacred Heart is a fitting way to atone for the evils of society: “Amid the devastation wrought by evil, the heart of Christ desires that we cooperate with him in restoring goodness and beauty to our world.”

Such reparation, Francis wrote, is “an extension of the heart of Christ.”

“Good intentions are not enough,” he said. “There has to be an inward desire that finds expression in our outward actions.”

The Pontiff closed by making a plea drawn from the spirituality of St. Thérèse and her desire for a spreading of Christ’s love: “I propose that we develop this means of reparation, which is, in a word, to offer the heart of Christ a new possibility of spreading in this world the flames of his ardent and gracious love.”

He also recalled how acts of charity must be rooted, ultimately, in God and be “nourished by Christ’s own love.”

This love of God and the Sacred Heart is at its heart a communal endeavor, wrote Francis, quoting from the divine command to love each other in the manner of God’s love for man.

He closed the encyclical by moving somewhat abruptly away from the theological language of prior passages, stating that the text highlights the Christian roots of his prior encyclicals Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti.

“I ask our Lord Jesus Christ to grant that his Sacred Heart may continue to pour forth the streams of living water that can heal the hurt we have caused, strengthen our ability to love and serve others, and inspire us to journey together towards a just, solidary and fraternal world,” Francis closed.