ROME – Pope Francis in a new encyclical stressed the social dimension of God’s love, saying the ancient devotion to the heart of Jesus must translate into care of others and is a remedy to “outdated” church structures and various forms of “fanaticism.”
“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 his newest encyclical, published Thursday.
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,” he said.
Christ’s love, he said, “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.”
Likewise, Francis said the church is also in need of this love, “lest the love of Christ be replaced with outdated structures and concerns, excessive attachment to our own ideas and opinions, and fanaticism in any number of forms.”
Rather than leading one to God, these “end up taking the place of the gratuitous love of God that liberates, enlivens, brings joy to the heart and builds communities,” he said.
Pope Francis offered these remarks in his newest encyclical, Dilexit Nos, meaning “He loved us,” which 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 encyclical offers an extended reflection on the image of the heart in Christian spirituality, and the development of devotion to the 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 noted that the heart is the deepest part of the human being and is the center of body and soul, representing 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,” he said.
Francis said 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 said.
Stressing the heart as a place capable of uniting fragmentation caused by individualism, he said a society “dominated by narcissism and self-centeredness will increasingly become ‘heartless.’”
“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,” he said.
Pope Francis said 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 reflected on Jesus’s own actions and words of love as described in scripture, saying 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 realize that, with him at our side, we have nothing to lose,” he said.
There is never a reason to distrust God, he said, 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,” he said, saying, “Jesus was not indifferent to the daily cares and concerns of people,” but was moved and showed compassion and even anger, grief and joy.
While at first blush this “may smack of pious sentimentalism,” the pope insisted 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 said.
Pope Francis in the third chapter focused on devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus as involving the entirety of his person, human and divine.
He clarified 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, Francis said, is a summons “to a personal relationship of encounter and dialogue,” which he said 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 said is a remedy to the forms of hatred, selfishness and indifference that can often occupy the heart.
He stressed the trinitarian nature of Jesus’s love, and referred to previous papal teachings on devotion to the Sacred Heart, 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,” he said.
Referring to various saints who claimed to have visions and mystical experiences involving the heart of Christ, the pope said 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 said 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,” he said.
Though it is not required, he urged believers to spend time in Eucharistic adoration.
Devotion to the heart of Jesus, he said, is a response to ancient heresies such as Jansenism, which emphasized divine grace but negated human free will.
Pope Francis said that in the modern church, in place of Jansenism there is “a powerful wave of secularization that seeks to build a world free of God.”
“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 said.
He cautioned that even within the church, “a baneful Jansenist dualism has re-emerged in new forms.”
This trend, he said, “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,” he said voicing hope that this “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.”
He said devotion to the heart of Christ also frees believers from what he said is “another kind of dualism” in communities and among pastors “excessively caught up in external activities, structural reforms that have little to do with the Gospel, obsessive reorganization plans, worldly projects, secular ways of thinking and mandatory programs.”
“The result is often a Christianity stripped of the tender consolations of faith, the joy of serving others, the fervor 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,” he said.
Francis called this the expression “of an illusory and disembodied otherworldliness.”
“Once we succumb to these attitudes, so widespread in our day, we tend to lose all desire to be cured of them,” he said, and urged the church to a renewed reflection on the love of Christ as represented in the Sacred Heart.
In the next two chapters, the pope reflected on Jesus’s love as quenching the thirst of humanity and as being personally involved in the plight of others, drawing on scripture and the writings of various saints.
“We need once more to take up the word of God and to realize, 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,” he said.
Love for one’s neighbor, he said, “is not simply the fruit of our own efforts; it demands the transformation of our selfish hearts.”
Francis noted that Jesus throughout scripture showed special love to the poor and marginalized, saying this priority “has changed the face of the world. It has given life to institutions that take care of those who find themselves in disadvantaged conditions.”
This love, he said, rejects a “structure of sin” which he said has impacted social development and is frequently part of “a dominant mind-set that considers normal or reasonable what is merely selfishness and indifference. This 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 said.
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 said, will then “grow in fraternity and solidarity.”
“Acts of love of neighbor, 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 said, saying 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 said, saying 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?” he asked.
Likewise, he questioned, “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?”
Francis said Christ’s heart also has a missionary dimension, and as such, Christians must bear witness to Christ and to his love in the world.
He concluded the encyclical saying its contents illustrate that 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 recognizing the dignity of each human being, and of working together to care for our common home,” he said.
He closed the document asking God “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.”
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