The Sacred Heart of Jesus in Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Church in Forest Hills, New York (OSV News photo/Gregory A. Shemitz)

At first glance, Pope Francis’s most recent encyclical, Dilexit nos—“He loved us”—is an outlier. Its subject, the “human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ,” appears far removed from the focus on contemporary global challenges discussed in Laudato si’ (2015) and Fratelli tutti (2020). Much of the new encyclical, released quietly during the last week of the Synod on Synodality in October, centers on the history and significance of Sacred Heart devotion as a spiritual practice. But in unexpectedly and forcefully taking up the Sacred Heart tradition, Francis also adapts it, going beyond its personal into its social and political dimensions. Like his other major encyclicals, Dilexit nos reinvigorates Catholic social thought for a broken world through an extended reflection on the radical self-giving love at the heart of the Gospel.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus remains one of the most ubiquitous Catholic symbols, even as its veneration has declined since the middle of the last century. Images and statues of a warmly smiling Jesus, his pierced heart visible within his chest or mysteriously hovering outside it, are still fixtures in Catholic homes and countless churches dedicated to the Sacred Heart, of which Sacré-Cœur in Paris is the most well-known. A symbol of divine love with ancient roots, the Sacred Heart owes much of its popularity to the testimony of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a French nun and mystic (1647–90). In her autobiography, Margaret Mary recounted multiple encounters with the risen Jesus, his wounds fresh and his heart radiant, calling the faithful to more frequent Mass attendance, Eucharistic Adoration, and reparation for sin. Popes in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries gradually embraced the Sacred Heart as an official devotion of the Church, eventually adding a feast day to the liturgical calendar. Today more than a dozen religious orders of priests and nuns are dedicated to the Sacred Heart.

While personal in its focus, the Sacred Heart devotion has long had political associations. During and after the French Revolution, for example, defenders of monarchy rallied around it as a symbol of religious tradition and the divinely ordained alliance between throne and altar. With different degrees of Vatican support, Catholic reactionaries up through Franco and Salazar welcomed the Sacred Heart as an icon of resistance to a godless modernity and its offshoots, liberalism and socialism. In 1899, Pope Leo XIII consecrated the whole world to the Sacred Heart, a reminder to secular powers of the ultimate power of Christ the King over heaven and earth. And as late as 1956, Pope Pius XII invoked the devotion against “the wicked designs of those who hate God and the Church,” declaring in his encyclical Haurietis aquas that “devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the most effective school of the love of God.”

With the Church’s embrace of modernity at the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), the Sacred Heart lost most of its conservative political overtones, and as religious devotion generally decreased in Western countries, so did popular devotion to the Sacred Heart. Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI were proponents of the Sacred Heart but did not make it a central theme of their pontificates. Neither did Francis—until the surprise publication of Dilexit nos

Modernity’s obsession with the rational individual, Francis insists, has distorted a more holistic understanding of the human person.

Interestingly, the encyclical begins not with the Catholic tradition but with a wide-ranging reflection on the heart as an enduring symbol of the whole person—body and soul, emotion and intellect. Modernity’s obsession with the rational individual, Francis insists, has distorted a more holistic understanding of the human person in reciprocal relationship with other persons and with the transcendent. Contemporary culture, dominated by materialism and rapid technological change, reduces people to individuals in selfish pursuit of their own advantage, leaving little room for the sincerity and interiority characteristic of the heart. “The failure to make room for the heart,” Francis writes, “has resulted in a stunting of the idea of a personal centre, in which love, in the end, is the one reality that can unify all the others.”

For Francis, Jesus beautifully exemplifies such love in action. Fully human and fully divine, he embraced all he encountered with a warmth that flowed from his heart—his whole person. In Scripture, Jesus’ personal gaze, gestures, and words reveal an infinite love that culminates in the sacrifice of the cross. Like Catholic thinkers before him, Francis traces the Sacred Heart tradition back to the Gospel of John’s account of a Roman soldier piercing the side of a crucified Christ, bringing forth blood and water. “The pierced heart of Christ embodies all God’s declarations of love present in the Scriptures,” Francis writes. “The open side of his Son is a source of life for those whom he loves, the fount that quenches the thirst of his people.”

God’s infinite love for all humankind is, for Francis, the core of the Sacred Heart devotion that Margaret Mary helped popularize. The pope references Jesus’ appeal to join her heart to his “in vivid, fervent, and loving terms.” He cites an arresting passage in her autobiography that likens her heart to “a little atom consumed in the fiery furnace” of Jesus’ own. While characterizing Margaret Mary’s visions as personal, not authoritative, Francis recommends her as an exemplar of prayer and adoration nourished by the divine love of Christ. He goes on to relate the experience of modern saints inspired by the Sacred Heart, including St. Thérèse of Lisieux and St. Charles de Foucauld, and underlines the devotion’s historical significance for his own religious order, the Society of Jesus, beginning with St. Claude de la Colombière, SJ, Margaret Mary’s confessor and advocate.

While Francis’s reflections on the Sacred Heart tradition take up much of the encyclical, his discussion of the devotion’s contemporary significance—and its social rather than merely personal relevance—is its most original contribution. A rethinking of the practice of reparation is central to his approach. For Margaret Mary and the tradition she represented, reparation was primarily an individual obligation—penance and prayer for one’s soul and those of others. Under the heading “the social significance of reparation to the heart of Christ,” Francis broadens the lens. Echoing John Paul II, he insists that “we are called to build a new civilization of love” in order to “make reparation as the heart of Christ would have us do.” He also refers to Benedict XVI’s reflections on the fiftieth anniversary of Haurietis aquas in 2006“In contemplating the pierced heart of the Lord,” Francis notes, we are “inspired to be more attentive to the sufferings and needs of others, and confirmed in our efforts to share in his work of liberation as instruments for the spread of his love.” 

While he generously references his predecessors, including Pope Paul VI, who first articulated the idea of a “civilization of love” in 1970, Francis more fully explores love’s social and political dimension. He calls for “efforts within society to restore and consolidate the common good” that involve not only the application of ethical norms but also a “conversion of heart.” And he builds a thematic link back to earlier passages in the encyclical that decry a broken world rife with individualism, materialism, and conflict. “All our actions need to be put under the ‘political rule’ of the heart” if we are to move beyond our current impasse, Francis writes. “When we witness the outbreak of new wars, with the complicity, tolerance or indifference of other countries, or petty power struggles over partisan interests, we may be tempted to conclude that our world is losing its heart,” he laments. “It is only by starting from the heart that our communities will succeed in uniting and reconciling differing minds and wills.” 

Francis’s attention to the social and political dimension of love in Dilexit nos extends the rich discussion of those themes in Fratelli tutti. While the earlier encyclical does not reference the Sacred Heart directly, it mentions the “heart” more than forty times and features a key chapter entitled “A Heart Open to the Whole World.” There, Francis sets out his idea of political love in more detail. “It is an act of charity to assist someone suffering,” the pope writes, “but it is also an act of charity, even if we do not know that person, to work to change the social conditions that caused his or her suffering.” The exercise of love by political leaders involves more than righting wrongs; it should also involve an encounter grounded in the mutual recognition of others, especially those in need and those with whom they disagree. “Amid the daily concerns of political life,” Francis insists, “the smallest, the weakest, the poorest should touch our hearts.” Because “political charity is also expressed in a spirit of openness to everyone,” government leaders “should be the first to make the sacrifices that foster encounter and to seek convergence on at least some issues.” In an analysis of the contemporary world that continues to resonate, Fratelli tutti critiques “various forms of fundamentalist intolerance” that “are damaging relationships between individuals, groups and peoples,” and calls instead for “living and teaching the value of respect for others, a love capable of welcoming differences.”

While Francis addresses wider social and political themes in Dilexit nos, the encyclical is, more than its two predecessors, intended primarily for the Catholic faithful. Published during the Synod on Synodality, it can be read as an impassioned call for Catholics to draw on the “human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ” to build a diverse, united, and resilient global Church. But Francis himself also relates Dilexit nos to his two previous encyclicals, with their focus on the global challenges that confront not just the Church but all humanity. “The present document,” he writes in his conclusion, “can help us see that the teaching of the social encyclicals Laudato si’ and Fratelli tutti is not unrelated to our encounter with the love of Jesus Christ.” That encounter, exemplified by the best of the Sacred Heart tradition, calls Catholics to deepen their engagement with other religious traditions and with the secular world—to build what Francis calls a “culture of encounter” that both recognizes human diversity and orients it to the global common good. Thanks to Dilexit nos, Catholics eager to participate in that larger project can benefit from a deeper understanding of vibrant resources within their own tradition. 

Thomas Banchoff is director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University.

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