‘Dilexit Nos’: wisdom from 20 saints on the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Top, left to right: St. Catherine of Siena, St. John Paul II, Sacred Heart of Jesus, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, St. Francis de Sales. Bottom, left to right: St. John Henry Newman, St. Gertrude of Helfta, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and St. Thomas Aquinas. / Credit: Brooklyn Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Gov.pl, CC BY 3.0 PL, via Wikimedia Commons; Leiloeira São Domingos, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Corrado Giaquinto, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Giovanni Battista Lucini, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Herbert Rose Barraud, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Public domain via Wikimedia Commons; Céline Martin, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons; Carlo Crivelli, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Vatican City, Nov 1, 2024 / 04:00 am (CNA). Pope Francis’ new encyclical on the Sacred Heart of Jesus is packed with testimonies from the saints of prayer and devotion to the heart of Christ throughout the centuries.Dilexit Nos, meaning “He Loved Us,” describes how devotion to the heart of Christ “reappears in the spiritual journey of many saints” and how in each one the devotion takes on new hues. The most frequently quoted saints in the encyclical are St. Thérèse of Lisieux, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, St. Francis de Sales, St. Vincent de Paul, and St. John Paul II, but more than two dozen saints are quoted in all.The encyclical explains how the Church Fathers’ descriptions of the wounded side of Christ as the wellspring of the life of grace later began to be associated with his heart, especially in monastic life.It adds that “devotion to the heart of Christ slowly passed beyond the walls of the monasteries to enrich the spirituality of saintly teachers, preachers, and founders of religious congregations, who then spread it to the farthest reaches of the earth.”Here are 20 saints devoted to the Sacred Heart as described by the pope’s new encyclical:St. Francis de Sales (1567–1622)St. Francis de Sales was deeply moved by Jesus’ words “Learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart” (Mt 11:29). He writes in the “Introduction to the Devout Life” that the ordinary trials of life — such as “the tiresome peculiarities of a husband or wife” or a headache or toothache — when accepted lovingly, “are most pleasing to God’s goodness.” In his letters, Francis wrote about Christ’s open heart, seeing it as an invitation to dwell within and trust completely in God’s grace, describing it as “a heart on which all our names are written.”“Surely it is a source of profound consolation to know that we are loved so deeply by Our Lord, who constantly carries us in his heart,” he said in a Lenten homily on Feb. 20, 1622.St. John Henry Newman (1801–1890)St. John Henry Newman chose “Cor ad cor loquitur” (“Heart speaks to heart”) as his motto, a phrase drawn from a letter by St. Francis de Sales. He experienced Christ’s Sacred Heart most powerfully in the Eucharist, where he sensed Jesus’ heart “beat[ing] for us still” and prayed: “O make my heart beat with thy heart. Purify it of all that is earthly, all that is proud and sensual, all that is hard and cruel, of all perversity, of all disorder, of all deadness. So fill it with thee, that neither the events of the day nor the circumstances of the time may have power to ruffle it, but that in thy love and thy fear it may have peace.”St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–1690)St. Margaret Mary Alacoque is perhaps the saint most associated with the Sacred Heart of Jesus because of a series of apparitions of Christ in Paray-le-Monial, France. In the first message Alacoque received, she described how the Lord “asked for my heart, which I asked him to take, which he did and then placed myself in his own adorable heart, from which he made me see mine like a little atom consumed in the fiery furnace of his own.” In subsequent messages, “he revealed to me the ineffable wonders of his pure love and to what extremes it had led him to love mankind” and how “ his pure love, with which he loves men to the utmost” is met with “only ingratitude and indifference.”Alacoque wrote in one of her letters: “It is necessary that the divine heart of Jesus in some way replace our own; that he alone live and work in us and for us; that his will … work absolutely and without any resistance on our part; and finally that its affections, thoughts, and desires take the place of our own, especially his love, so that he is loved in himself and for our sakes. And so, this lovable heart being our all in all, we can say with St. Paul that we no longer live our own lives, but it is he who lives within us.”St. Claude de La Colombière (1641–1682)St. Claude de La Colombière was a French Jesuit priest and confessor of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. He helped develop devotion to the Sacred Heart, combining the experiences of St. Margaret Mary with the contemplative approach of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Claude meditated on the attitude of Christ toward those who sought to arrest and put him to death