Christ’s wounded side remains open in our Savior’s risen body as a wellspring of living water. His Sacred Heart is often represented with a deep wound inflicted by the lance and the wounds of the crown of thorns; these are inseparable from this devotion, where we contemplate Christ’s love, offering himself in sacrifice to the very end. The risen Lord’s heart preserves the signs of complete self-surrender and intense suffering for our sake. Naturally, we should respond to our Lord’s immense outpouring of love and suffering that he chose to endure in loving us.
One aspect of devotion to Christ’s heart we need to recover is consoling his heart… Now, let’s focus on the hearts of the faithful who lovingly contemplate and experience the mystery of Christ’s passion, not only as a past event but as a mystery made present to us by grace, or better, letting us be mystically present at the moment of our redemption. If we truly love the Lord, why wouldn’t we want to console him?
The mystery of Christ’s redeeming passion transcends, by God’s grace, all boundaries of time and space. On the cross, Jesus offered himself for all sins, including our own and those yet to be committed. Thus, Pope Pius XI realized that the consoling acts we now offer transcend time, touching his wounded heart. “If Jesus’ soul became sorrowful unto death because of our sins, while still in the future but yet foreseen, doubtlessly he can at the same time be consoled by our reparation, likewise foreseen, at the moment when ‘there appeared to him an angel from heaven’ (Lk 22:43), so that his heart, oppressed with weariness
and anguish, might find consolation. And so even now, in a wondrous yet true manner, we can and ought to console that Most Sacred Heart, continually wounded by the sins of thankless men.”
The theological basis of this aspect of the Sacred Heart devotion may seem weak, yet the heart—and the sensus fidelium—has its reasons, perceiving a mystery beyond human logic, as Christian piety, meditating Christ’s self-offering on the cross, goes beyond just remembering Christ’s passion as a past event, but as a sharing in something through faith. So this conviction has solid theological grounding, as Jesus took our own sins upon his bruised shoulders with his timeless love that is infinitely greater than our inadequacy.
Reasons of the Heart
One may ask: how can we comfort the past sufferings of the risen Lord reigning in glory? His risen heart preserves its wound as an ongoing reminder that grace makes it possible for us to experience moments of the past. In pondering this, we follow a mystical path firmly grounded in God’s word that transcends our mental limitations. As Pope Pius XI makes clear: “How can acts of reparation offer solace now, when Christ already reigns in heaven’s beatitude? … St. Augustine’s words can answer it—‘The one who loves will understand what I say.’ One who possessed great love for God meditates on Christ in the past to see
him labor for man in sorrow, suffering the greatest hardships, ‘for us men and for our salvation,’ nearly worn out with sadness, anguish, ‘bruised for our sins’ (Is 53:5), and healing us by those very bruises. The more the faithful ponder these things, the more clearly they see that the sins of mankind, whenever they were committed, were why Christ was delivered up to death.”
Pope Francis, Dilexit Nos, 151-155, edited for brevity and impact.
Fr. John Waiss
Pastor
