19 days after Pentecost Sunday, on the Friday after the octave of the Feast of Corpus Christi, we have the Catholic Solemnity of the Sacred Heart. The day is a timely reminder of Jesus’ unconditional love and boundless mercy as symbolised by his heart.
Collect:
Grant, we pray, almighty God, that we, who glory in the Heart of your beloved Son and recall the wonders of his love for us, may be made worthy to receive an overflowing measure of grace from that fount of heavenly gifts. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever
The Sacred Heart is a lovely liturgical devotion. The iconography is another matter.
Indeed this whole devotion appears to have come from a so-called apparition (four) from St. Margaret Mary Aloquope – 1647 to 1690. Which also was seen in the private writings of St. Gertrude.
What has been bothering me is that the entire notion of this devotion is looked down upon by the Eastern Orthodox churches, especially the Russians, who call this devotion, or attempting to have an intimate relationship with Christ as a sort of spiritual delusion. “Don’t play at having a romance with God!” said one Russian theologian. I really have nothing to say against or for this devotion, because it’s so personalized. But all I can think of is that Truth always has two components: The Intellectual and the emotional. If you intellectually know that bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, there will still be doubts lingering if you cannot emotionally connect to that Truth. On the opposite, if you you “feel” this is true, but cannot intellectualize it, then “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” yet ignorance is not a virtue, and hopefully a lack of knowledge will not result in becoming superstitious but instead result in chasing after the Truth.
Just for myself or history, this devotion was profound in the Irish Catholic Church of the 50′s and 60′s, but as I grew up, I was not comfortable with seeing the so-called Sacred-Heart alone and by itself and with thorns, and drops of blood. And btw, I never doubted the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and still don’t, I just not believe (now) in the scholastic doctrine and definition of transubstantiation. I would be closer to Luther on the Eucharist myself.
Indeed the Russian Orthodox are very intellectual, but certainly mystical.. but always seeking a balance of cataphotic with apophatic theology.
*don’t believe (better english)
Maybe the isolation of the Sacred Heart grows too close to dividing the wholeness of our One Lord Jesus Christ; this may be the reason why the Orthodox question the orthodoxy of this devotion. It’s an entirely intellectual issue. But then, as a mystical expression, a sort of metaphysical heart that represents His love for us, it get harder to object to, at least using intellectual tools given to us by traditional scholasticism.
As for the Eucharist. I am not entirely learned in the 2,000 years of teaching regarding this Most Blessed Sacrament, much less differing theological opinions about it. But this is simple to me: I will not die and make sacrifices for a “symbol” or a “representation”; the Eucharist, which is central to the Liturgy of a historic and apostolic Church, either is or it isn’t truly the Body and Blood of Christ. The Catholic Church holds and professes that Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, is really truly and substantially present, body, blood, soul, and divinity under the appearance of bread and wine. Our senses can lie to us, and what we see and taste as the accidents of bread and wine is no exception; It is Jesus Christ personally. It is from this single fact that every other reality of the Church flows. If it is not true that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood of Christ, then the atheists are right: The Church is a great, big 2,000-year-old lie invented by deceivers for idiots with nothing else to devote their lives to. The Eucharist either is or isn’t what Jesus Christ said it was. I think that’s the simplification of what divides the Catholic and the Protestant.
If the a Christian believes that the Eucharist is not absolutely, truly the Body and Blood of Christ under the appearance of bread, and they still believe that God loves them unconditionally and infinitely, the denier must inevitably concede that God is a liar. Let us consider this: An infinite God is capable of an infinite number of things especially in demonstrating His love for Man. What the Catholic Church teaches and professes is at least -possible-, that God can order things in such a way that He Himself is present in such a way, and He would have done this to unite Himself not just spiritually but also physically with Man. Because every Mass is the expression of God’s love for us, then for God to have the ability, which God obviously has because He’s God, and choose to NOT exercise it, would mean that God was holding something back of Himself, not TOTALLY giving Himself out of love to us. He would have another manner to unite Himself to the object of His love and choose to actively restrain Himself. That means, necessarily, that God has willfully and freely placed a constriction, a boundary, on His love for us, which means He does not love us totally, and that makes Him a liar. He could have loved us more, but chose not to.
What lover says to he beloved: “I choose to love you partially, not completely”? That’s not love, that’s self-centeredness, and certainly, a God who chooses to love us partially is not worthy of anyone’s devotion and sacrifice and those Christians who suffer and die, as we speak, in places like Iraq and China die in vain for a God who lies, if He did not love us completely. The Truth of the Eucharist is a necessity born out of love. This must be said, and repeated for as long as necessary, because it is THAT important.
Going back to the topic of the Sacred Heart, no one ever says “In the name of the Father, the Sacred Heart, and the Holy Spirit.” The devotion to the Sacred Heart is, ultimately, not superior to the Sacrament because the Sacrament is Christ, wholly, and truly, and if the discussion must shift to a comparison between the Holy Eucharist and devotion to the Sacred Heart, I would say that the Holy Eucharist is of greater importance, because it is at the heart even in the discussions regarding the return to the wholeness of Christendom.
In the end, good theology must press into the mystical reality, for here is “spirit and truth” itself, we can see this beautifully in the biblical and even mystical theology of St. Paul, especially!