Whatever Happened to the Sacred Heart Devotion?

Le Sacré Cœur, Maurice Denis, 1916

Last this week, on Friday—because it is the day after the octave of Corpus Christi—we will celebrate the Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

It is difficult for Catholics today to appreciate the massiveness of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus prior to the Second Vatican Council. It was the quintessential devotion, right alongside Adoration, Benediction, and the Rosary. The Nine First Fridays, Novenas to the Sacred Heart, holy cards and wall-mounted pictures, statuary, stained glass… you couldn’t enter a Catholic church or home without coming face to face with it.

The origins of the devotion are ancient, as one can find Fathers of the Church who comment on the wound in the side of Christ as a wound piercing His heart and releasing blood and water, symbols of the sacramental life of the Church. It achieved a higher profile in the Middle Ages when so many mystics spoke of the Lord’s heart: among these, St. Gertrude of Helfta shines out. When in the 17th century St. Margaret Mary Alacoque had her visions of the Lord in which he taught her about the devotion He wished to see to His loving Heart and to the reception of Holy Communion—visions directed principally against the rampant errors of Jansenism—the content of the devotion was already traditional, even if some of the expressions and recommended practices were new.

What we see when we look at the history of the devotion is a strong concentration on the theme of victimhood. This stands to reason: the first Victim, the “Host” par excellence, is the Lord upon the Cross, giving up His life with infinite charity for the Father and for mankind; and since the Holy Mass is the re-presentation, the making present in our midst, of that once-for-all sacrifice of love, the Mass is the most perfect gift, expression, and invitation of the Sacred Heart. The devotion to the Sacred Heart is, all at once, a devotion to the Savior’s love, sacrifice, victimhood, and gift of Himself as our nourishment—the nourishment of our sacrificial charity.