The article by Prof. Leonardo Salutati, published on the Blog of the Accademia Alfonsiana
This is an encyclical that traces the history of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which has its foundations in Sacred Scripture and proposes its theological and historical meaning through Tradition up to the modern devotion born following the apparitions to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690) and spread by St. Claude of Colombière (1641-1682) with the practice of the first nine Fridays of the month in reparation for the offenses suffered by the Heart of Jesus. Its objective was the regeneration of Christianity, increasingly declining towards a system of social sin. Through Sister Marguerite Marie, the Sacred Heart in fact directly addressed Louis XIV (1638-1715) to lead a work of social regeneration, to counteract the process of de-Christianization that began with the Protestant Revolution (1517), which would continue through the calming of religiosity caused by Jansenism, the futility of customs, the inattention to Christian morality and the spread of a critical spirit towards the Church and religion: precursors of that cultural and ideological phenomenon that would be the Enlightenment, which would later unleash the political and institutional Revolution of 1789 in France, from which all the ideologies of the contemporary world would develop. In today’s world, consumerism, rationalism, and individualism have generated “a dominant mentality that considers normal or rational, what in reality is only selfishness and indifference.” (n. 183)
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus presents us with the pierced heart of Christ, the center and engine of all Being, the seat of the will, which pulsates with the love and mercy of God for man and which becomes an essential symbol to express his love for every creature: “a burning furnace of divine and human love and the greatest fullness that a human being can reach.” (n. 30)
For this reason, the Encyclical also offers us the key to understanding the entire magisterium of Pope Francis, as expressly stated: “What this document expresses allows us to discover that what is written in the social Encyclicals ‘Laudato si’ and ‘Fratelli tutti’ is not foreign to our encounter with the love of Jesus Christ, because, by drinking from this love, we become capable of weaving fraternal bonds, of recognizing the dignity of every human being and of taking care of our common home together.” (n. 217)
In this regard, the chapter dedicated to the doctrine of reparation and its social significance, presented through the Magisterium of Pius XI and St. John Paul II, is of absolute value. In fact, “It is certain that every sin harms the Church and society, so that “each sin can be attributed (…) the character of social sin” (…) especially for some sins which “constitute, by their very object, a direct aggression against our neighbor” (n. 183). The repetition of these sins against others, then, often leads to the consolidation of a structure of sin that influences the development of peoples. Therefore, it is not only a moral norm that pushes us to resist these structures of sin and to «propitiate a social dynamism that restores and builds the good, but it is the very “conversion of the heart” that “imposes the obligation” to repair such structures. It is our response to the loving Heart of Jesus Christ who teaches us to love» (ibid.).
Francis further explains that precisely because evangelical reparation has this strong social meaning, “our acts of love, service and reconciliation, if they are to be truly reparative, require that Christ prompt them, motivate them and make them possible. (…) Christian reparation cannot be understood only as a set of external works, which are also indispensable and sometimes admirable (…) it requires a spirituality, a soul and a meaning that give it strength, energy, and tireless creativity. It needs the life, the fire and the light that come from the Heart of Christ.” (n. 184)
These words echo the doctrine of St. Teresa of Lisieux, also reiterated in the encyclical, which taught not to understand reparation “as a sort of primacy of sacrifices or moralistic fulfillment,” but to place absolute trust in the love of Jesus, considered “as the best offering, pleasing to the Heart of Christ.” In fact, the Doctor of the Church further states, what pleases Jesus “is to see me love my smallness and my poverty, it is the blind hope that I have in his mercy! This is my only treasure (…) to love Jesus, to be his victim of love, the weaker one is, without desires or virtues, the more one is suited to the operations of this Love that consumes and transforms! (…) It is trust and nothing but trust that must lead us to Love!” Also, the «forms of spirituality too focused on human effort, on personal merit, on the offering of sacrifices, on specific tasks to “earn heaven”», risk leading to «complacency in them and the belief that they are something great» (n. 138). And Francis recalls: «A human heart that makes room for the love of Christ through total trust and allows it to expand in its life with its fire, becomes capable of loving others like Christ, making himself small and close to all. In this way Christ quenches his own thirst and gloriously spreads in us and through us the flames of his ardent tenderness.” (n. 203)
Francis’s teaching is not “crushed” by the social, but a message addressed to the Church and to the entire human family that comes from a single source presented here in the most explicit way: Christ the Lord and His love for all humanity.
Source: ilmantellodellagiustizia.it
