Welcome
to this second talk exploring aspects of devotion to the Sacred Heart which are
being given in June, the month traditionally concerned with this devotion.
As
I mentioned in the first talk, the Sacred Heart isn’t a devotion with which
many Anglican’s are familiar, even though it was beginning to influence the
church in Britain – and throughout Europe – long before the Reformation. For example, St. Anselm, the 11th
cent Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote ‘The opening of the side of Christ reveals
the riches of his love, the love of his heart for us’. And Dame Julian of Norwich in the 15th
century wrote in Ch. 24 of 'Revelations of Divine Love:' ‘Then our Lord
looked into his side and rejoiced. By
this sweet look he had me gaze within his wound; he showed me a fair,
delectable place, large enough for all humanity that should be saved to rest in
peace and love. And therewith he had me
recall his dear, worthy blood and precious water, which he did pour out for
love, and he showed me his blissful heart.’
But
this wonderful river of affective devotion, devotion concerns the stirring of
our emotions to help deepen our desire for God, was blocked at the Reformation
and didn’t re-emerge until John Wesley began to speak from a heart warmed by
Christ. Later, at the end of the 19th
century, a few men came together to form the Society of Divine Compassion –
another way of referring to the Sacred Heart.
It’s clear from the writings of one of them, Fr. Andrew, that he had a
deep devotion to the Heart of Jesus which
we hear in his poem, Sacre Coeur:
Dear Heart, Who
in Thy tender love didst come
Not from some
cavernous and vast womb
Of cold and
passionless eternity,
But didst in
human wise take flesh for me
Of sweet St
Mary's fair virginity,
and made ‘midst
men Thy home.
Help me to see
the greatest in the least,
The whole of
life is one great Eucharist;
in common ways
and simple loyalties
To find hid
treasure of high sanctities,
as Love links
symbols to realities
in Thy blest
altar Feast.
THE
FEAST
Perhaps
Fr. Andrew felt that to call this emerging community the ‘Society of the Sacred
Heart’ might be too much for most Anglicans!
But the Sacred Heart was one of their two dedications – the other being
our Lady – and reflected their eventual choice of name ‘Divine Compassion’. That was what these men, inspired by St.
Francis of Assisi, wanted the people amongst whom they ministered to experience
– the compassionate, Heart of Jesus.
The
Society was never large and it’s last member died in 1952, but it did
remarkable work not only in ministering in the slums of Plaistow but also in
helping establish the Hospital and Homes of St. Giles for Lepers in East
Hanningfield, Essex in 1914. In
recognition of the importance of SDC the revised Daily Office Book of the
Society of St. Francis, published in 1992, named the Friday of the week following
Corpus Christi, ‘The Divine Compassion of Christ’ and allowed it to be kept as
a Feast. That day (today), of course, is
recognised as the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Catholic
Church. ‘The Divine Compassion’ also
appeared in Celebrating Common Prayer, but when the Liturgical Commission published
‘Comm. Worship’ they dropped it from the Calendar. I assume that was because it sounded too
‘Romish’ and I’m unsure if it appears in any of the multitude of Anglican
service books which have appeared since. I don’t think it’s recognised in the
calendar of the Episcopal Church, but I’d be interested to know if it’s
officially recognised anywhere in the Anglican Communion.
Pope
Pius IX had made the Feast of the Sacred Heart part of the general Calendar of
the Church in 1856 but the first Office and Mass were composed by St. John
Eudes, but the institution of the Feast was a result of the appearances of our
Lord to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in 1673.
During one of them, Jesus had said to her: "I
promise you in the excessive mercy of my Heart that my all-powerful love will
grant to all those who receive Holy Communion on the First Fridays in nine
consecutive months the grace of final perseverance; they shall not die in my
disgrace, nor without receiving their sacraments. My divine Heart shall be
their safe refuge in this last moment."
SACRED
HEART AND CHURCH OF ENGLAND
Such
sentiments may have come from the lips of our Saviour, but it appears that they
don’t resonate with many Anglicans …
Talk about the ‘grace’ which comes from receiving the Body and Blood of
Christ in Holy Communion, the need to prepare yourself, when necessary, by
making your confession and so on seems not only foreign but, these days,
unnecessary.
Yet
it’s part of that affective piety which seeks to involve the emotions to deepen
devotion to the physicality of Christ and the saints, something which seems to
have died in England with the Reformation and has hardly re-appeared. Devotions concerning Mary, the Blessed
Sacrament and Stations of the Cross may have gained a toe-hold, but the Sacred
Hearts of Jesus and Mary (and they are both as one) have hardly any place. And
that is in spite of the way we know one of the most important teachings of
Christianity concerns the love of God. We
may talk about it and preach about it, but we are an Incarnational, sacramental
people – matter matters – and the image of the Sacred Heart reveals profound
aspects of Godly love and the cost God in Jesus was prepared to pay to reveal
the depths of his love, something I want to look at in the third and final talk
.
This
piety towards the Sacred Heart isn’t just so we can feel better about ourselves
or one intended to give us a spiritual ‘boost’, which is what some people say
they get from going to a service, but
to effect a change in our life. Devotion
to the Sacred Heart is intimately connected with personal conversion – with our
metanoia. This is brought out in
another of the apparitions to Margaret Mary:
“Behold this Heart which has so loved
human beings that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming
itself, in order to give them proof of its love, and in return I received from
the greater number nothing but ingratitude, contempt, irreverence,
sacrilege, and coldness towards the
Sacrament of my love.”
SACRED
HEART AND THE BLESSED SACRAMENT
That
final phrase, ‘the Sacrament of my love’, is something we ought to ponder – it
reveals the intimate connection between the Sacred Heart and the Blessed
Sacrament. It’s a phrase which
highlights the point–counterpoint of Jesus’ wooing us with his love: we reject
him and then he loves us even more ardently. This is a powerful affirmation of the
unconditionality of God’s limitless love, a love that doesn’t depend our
worthiness or actions. A love which, the
Collect for the Sodality of Mary, Mother of Priests compares with an ocean.
That
was a term used by the Jesuit, St. Claude de la Colombiere, who was of immense
help to St Margaret Mary: ocean of mercy found in the Heart of Jesus in also
present in the Eucharist. There were
three occasions when St. Margaret Mary spoke of this love revealed through the
Sacred Heart of the Eucharist, revelations which occurred whilst St. Margaret
Mary was meditating before the Blessed Sacrament. These point, in a very striking way, to the
fact that God longs for us to let our love for him flow. Both the Sacred Heart and the Eucharist reveal
that ‘love was his meaning’ and that we were made out of love, for love. One reflects the other and both are the
consequence of the Incarnation – at the centre of the Sacrament in which the
Word of God is present lies the Sacred Heart wanting to engage with ours. As someone pointed out: the ‘so’ in ‘God so
loved the world …’ is the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
As
many mystics realised, this holy courtship happens within us and that is why
our response is described in their visions as an awakening to our true nature,
a realisation of God within. In that
moment our solitary and self-sufficient ego turns out to be simply a
much-too-limited identity. We find our
heart widens with this universal compassion found in the Heart of Christ: made
by a God who is love, we are never more human than when we are expressing love
– and both the Sacred Heart and the Blessed Sacrament make clear the nature of
Godly love.
That’s
why those ordained to ministry need to have the Heart of Jesus – why they need
to make sure they’re constantly returning to this source of the love they
proclaim in word and deed. Every priest needs, in a real way, to be a
priest of the Sacred Heart, a priest of Divine Compassion, for it is Compassion which lies in the depths of the Sacred Heart – indeed, is the way in which that
Heart is to be understood. We can always
be present to His compassion when we come before Him in the Blessed
Sacrament.
So
people have longed to look upon that loving compassion and can do so when the
Sacrament is exposed to our gaze on the altar: there we can be present to Him
as He is present to us. I
know it’s unlikely to happen, but I have always thought how wonderful it would
be if every church offered times when the Blessed Sacrament was shown, so anyone
could sit or kneel in prayer in His Presence. Couldn’t churches consider
helping people come and adore Him who longed – and longs – to be with us? There we can talk with Him or just rest with Him
– as did St. Margaret Mary – and know that He is fully present to all who come
to Him. Or, as someone I know does,
could simply curl up before Him who opens His Heart to us in the Sacrament of
Divine Love.
But
even if we cannot find an open church where the brilliance of the Host shines
out to our gaze, we can always take Him with us in the tabernacle of our heart for, as St Francis of Assisi
wrote in his Rule of 1221: ‘We
should make a dwelling-place within ourselves where He can stay, He who is the
Lord God Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’ The Sacred Heart of the Blessed
Sacrament invites us to make our heart’s like His.
Recently
someone wrote to me about the way she realised her heart was growing harder: ‘About six years ago I became troubled that
my heart was becoming like stone, and I made a conscious choice to change this
situation. I knew that only God could
help me on this one, and He did.’ She
went on to observe: ‘I’ve noticed that, as some people get older, they become
increasingly bitter and resentful about what life hurls at them. They may even choose to have hatred running
in their lives. It sort of energises
them and keeps them going.’
I
had noticed something similar in some people’s attitudes towards those of other
nationalities or ethnicities – and especially towards refugees and immigrants –
following Brexit, and we’re only too conscious of this in the recent Black
Lives Matter protests. And I reflected
on something the Holy Father wrote last year: “Jesus’ only judgement” he said,
“is one filled with mercy and compassion.” Yet re-making one’s heart isn’t easy, which
is why the need to do so lies at the heart of ours and every faith. As one great Scottish evangelist wrote: ‘To
refuse to be continuously converted puts a stumbling block in the growth of our
spiritual life. There are areas of self-will in our lives where our pride pours
contempt on the throne of God and says, “I won’t submit.”
CONCLUSION
In the end, devotion to the
Sacred Heart is simply about making the heart, the centre of our being, like Christ’s. Nurturing within ourselves His love and
compassion which is why the fact that the Sacred Heart has never had a place in
the life of the Church of England is a cause for great sadness, for it is our loss.
We may or may not have celebrated the
Feast today (maybe, next year?!) but the reality of the Divine Compassion of
Jesus is something we need to desire to flow in our hearts and
be lived out in our lives. This ought not to be an optional celebration
for catholic’s ‘who like that sort of thing’ but one which is of
obligation.
We
are obligated to the Sacred Heart – made in the image of God we are not
completely human – we don’t reflect what being human is all about – until our
heart is like the Heart of Jesus – and Mary. We
will find ourselves in the Sacred Heart, know ourselves there, and know that
the suffering we might experience as we seek to love as He does takes us more
deeply into His Heart.
O Jesu, O Sacred
Heart,
burning with Divine
love
send into my heart
a spark of that
fire
which burneth in
thee;
excite in me a burning and a flaming spirit;
impress upon me
the seal of thy
Love
that I may
worthily before thy work
Prayer
from A Pilgrim’s Book of Prayers, Fr. Gilbert Shaw, p.
26
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