The Sacred Heart and a Faith that Does Justice

One of the most profound movements of the Second Vatican Council comes in the renewed emphasis on the humanity of Jesus, and the importance of that humanity for our salvation. Although never denying the fully human nature of Jesus, first defined at the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD), for centuries the Church had seemed to stress the divinity of Christ at the expense of his humanity. But with Vatican II, the Church stressed that the divinity of Christ was subordinated out of love to the humanity of Jesus, by which the Word of God became as we are. As noted in Lumen Gentium (the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church), Jesus “thought with a human mind, acted by human choice, and loved with a human heart.”

It is this incarnational principle—so familiar to those who have encountered Christ in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius—that most excited the Jesuits gathered in the wake of Vatican II, and led them to transform the Society of Jesus into the community we know today, whose mission is built on a faith that does justice, and on our need for reconciliation with God, with the earth, and with one another. For when we find God less in the glorified Jesus of heaven, and more in the poor child born in a stable, or the tired preacher walking the streets of Galilee, or, especially, the condemned one on his way to Golgatha, then we come to recognize a far different vision of God then the one imagined in the “Church triumphant.” And moreover, we come to understand the glory of Jesus in a way inseparably bound to human flourishing. In stressing, as Vatican II does, the humanity of Jesus, we recognize a God who saves us not by power from above, but through chosen weakness and willing submission, through sacrifice and solidarity, through an act of unyielding communion with those who are least in the eyes of the world. In this way, the way of the suffering Jesus, everything of God’s becomes ours and everything we are becomes one with God. The way to God, therefore, is not the way of withdrawal from the pain of the world, but way to its very center—especially those places that seem most wounded, most forgotten, most in need of love and reconciliation. At the heart of the world’s suffering, Christ is found and the Church is born.

It is in this context that the 31st General Congregation of the Jesuits, meeting shortly after the Second Vatican Council, takes up the devotion to the Sacred Heart, and reimagines it in light of the new mission of the Society. Speaking of this devotion, the Congregation notes: “The Church finds a splendid symbol for this love, at once human and divine, in the wounded heart of Christ, for the blood and water which flowed from it aptly represent the inauguration and growth of the Church and solicit our response of love” (GC31, 139). Far from the sentiment of the previous century, the Jesuits of GC 31 emphasize the wounded heart of the crucified Christ as a sign of our wounded world, pierced by injustice and misdirected power, by the violence of authority and of fear—to which Christ opens himself, in solidarity with and love for every oppressed or murdered woman and man.

At St. Ignatius Parish, where our history and our mission call us to stand in similar solidarity with the wounded of our city, our nation, and our Church—with LGBTQ+ persons who feel oppressed and forgotten, with women who feel their voices overwhelmed by tired traditions and patriarchal fears, with veterans and families living on the streets, with victims of violence and racism, with elders who long to be included, with all those seeking hope and a reason to believe—the reimagined devotion to the Sacred Heart is something we need, I believe, and which calls to us. This is why former Superior General of the Jesuits, Fr. Pedro Arrupe, renewed the consecration of the Society to the Sacred Heart following GC 31, and why current Superior General Fr. Arturo Sosa calls us to it again—speaking of it as part of our ongoing conversion, by which we give ourselves to the wounded Christ, trusting that our wounds, and our world’s wounds, will find healing in him. I hope all in our community will participate in this dedication, next week, during the weekend Masses when we celebrate the Feast of St. Ignatius (31 July).