February 2025
Dilexit Nos – The Significance of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Is the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (SHJ) declining in recent years? Catholic writers raise this question in the troubled world where we are facing wars, socio-economic inequalities, unchecked consumerism, and technologies that threaten to undermine human nature. In this context, on 24th Oct 2024, Pope Francis delivered an Encyclical, Dilexit Nos (He Loved Us): On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ.
The Encyclical calls for a renewed focus on SHJ as a symbol of compassion and spiritual healing. It focuses on the theme of divine and human love as embodied in the SHJ. The SHJ is the ultimate symbol of God’s mercy. Pope defines the heart as a locus of desire and the place where important decisions take shape. He explains that the heart unites the rational and instinctive aspects of the person and both higher faculties and the passions that pass by the heart. The heart is also a locus of sincerity and the locus of love.
In the book, In Him Alone is Our Hope a compilation of all the talks of Servant of God Fr. Pedro Arrupe on the SHJ, published in 1982, he defines the heart as the centre, source and primal word, full of significance. Love flows from our hearts. Penning the foreword to that book, Fr. Karl Rahner notes, “Fr. Arrupe sets the devotion to the Sacred Heart in the general context of the theology of love and in this love he sees the inseparability of the love of God and the love of the neighbour. This way this devotion can discover its deep relationship with the twofold mission that his Order has given itself under his leadership in the 32nd General Congregation, namely: the commitment to the Gospel for the ever-greater glory of God and to justice in the world, without which man’s complete salvation cannot be achieved”.
The 33rd General Congregation emphasises this mission of the Society, declaring that it “accepts and receives with a spirit overflowing with joy and gratitude, the gentle burden that our Lord Jesus Christ has entrusted to it, to practice, promote and propagate devotion to His most divine Heart”.
A long tradition of the Society of Jesus is to spread devotion to the SHJ, an exemplary exercise that all our communities hold. Affirming this devotion, Fr. Pieter Jan Beckx consecrated the Society to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in September 1871. Fr. Pedro Arrupe renewed that consecration in 1972. More recently, Fr. Arturo Sosa again in September 2024 at Paray-le Monial, during his visit to the French-speaking Western European Province, asserted that ‘devotion to the Sacred Heart is first and foremost a reminder of the centrality of our relationship with Jesus Christ. This is true for every Christian and especially true for every companion of Jesus’.
It is in this love, we celebrate our lives and vocation. Again it will move us towards the Lord and towards the people whom He loves. There is only one way to comprehend our love for Christ Jesus and to express that love is to love the people to whom we render our service. The SHJ which is filled with love invites us to spread only love, not hatred. We are all companions of our Lord.
In the month of February, we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. It is there, Mother Mary revealed herself as the Immaculate Conception and invited all people for conversion of heart. She invites all of us too for the change of our hearts. We shall join with St. Ignatius in his prayer to Mother Mary, to place us with her Son. As She did it to St. Ignatius and surely, she will do it for us.
Jebamalai Irudayaraj
Provincial – Chennai Jesuits