Monday, June 24, 2019

Jean Leclerq: “The Liturgical Roots of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart in Modern Times”




The tradition of the liturgy and of the writings which it influenced clearly points up the two fundamental aspects of the Sacred Heart devotion.

First of all the worship of latria paid by the Church to her Savior is directed to His whole person and in particular to His human heart, this heart of flesh which is hypostatically united to the Person of the Word and is, consequently, both seat and symbol of infinite love—not just the love of a man, but that of the God-Man. This heart is the center and sign of the love of the Word made flesh, of the charity of God in human form.

Secondly, and because of this, the worship rendered to the Sacred Heart is essentially a worship of adoration, as Pius XII told us. Twice, moreover, in his Haurietis aquas, the Pope insisted that the heart we adore is the glorious heart of the Lord. Our first duty toward it is not reparation, but adoration of redeeming love, and consecration—that is, the gift of self which ought to be the response to this love. If there is expiation it is because we take a share in His redeeming sacrifice in order to receive its benefits, the sacrifice of Him who alone takes away the sins of the world.

To adore Him is to offer ourselves to Him; this is the purpose of devotion, in the full sense which the word devotio had for the ancients and for St. Thomas, and which it retains in the liturgy. Originally in the Latin of classical antiquity devovere and devotio referred to the act of dedicating someone to the gods of the netherworld. Christianity took over the words to express that interior disposition by which one dedicates, gives, or consecrates himself to God through Jesus Christ.

Naturally, in recent times when the word "devotion" has come to be connected exclusively with those forms of piety which are more or less emotional, the more or less sincere expressions of certain "devout" souls, the word has been stripped of its rich and noble significance. Today we prefer various substitute expressions, such as "gift of self" or ''commitment," yet all are summed up in devotio, the word Pius XII has continued to use to characterize the worship we owe to the Sacred Heart.

For devotio is really worship, and primarily liturgical worship. Further, it is that form of cult which is the practice of the Christian life, whence the expression, virtutes colere. The burden and fruits of the mysteries we celebrate must be made to overflow into our daily conduct.

So it is with the devotion to the Sacred Heart. Once we understand it in the light of liturgical tradition and of the contemporary magisterium which comments upon that tradition, we see it does not stop with Jesus' human heart. It plunges us into the depths of love within the Trinity; it confronts every member of the Church with this mystery of faith. In the eyes of the Father, each of them, and all together, constitute only one heart in the Heart of Jesus.

That is why when St. Paul spoke of charity and its manifestations—concrete practical ones, not sentimental—he would so often say that he loved "in the heart of Jesus Christ, in visceribus lesu Christi." We cannot love except in the Heart of Jesus Christ, for there is no one except Jesus Christ who loves as it is needful to love.

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