Published during the Synod on Synodality, the fourth Encyclical of Pope Francis focuses on Jesus' heart as the place where love and compassion, peace and joy, faith and hope dwell. We can also say that, for our Holy Father, the heart is like a house in which we discover emotional intention and powerful attention, especially in the world that lost already the heart's desire. We know that the Bible uses "the heart to describe our real intentions, the things we truly seek and desire, apart from all appearances", (Gaudete et exultate, #83). According to the Holy Father, no one can escape his heart, because each one must guard it as the apple of his or her eye.
We notice that in our daily lives, we experience the unconditional love of Jesus. During his earthly life, Jesus loved men and women, and continues to love them through his Spirit. In fact, in every culture, the heart symbolizes love. But what kind of love is it about? For a missionary, who embraced already the evangelical culture, the heart is the eloquent expression of love. The heart, as said Pope Francis, is "the locus of desire and the place where important decisions take shape."(Dilexit Nos, #3) If we have to take a decision, our hearts play an important role. But, what do we mean by the heart? How can we find the symbols of love?
The Heart as our face-to-face reality with Jesus Christ
In the book of Proverbs, we recognize the value of the heart when the writer invites us to trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not on our own understanding. (Cf. Pr. 3:5) The heart is related to the "core that lies hidden beneath all outward appearances, but even beneath the superficial thoughts that can lead us astray." (Dilexit Nos, #4). In this way, we cannot know our own life if we do not know our heart. Fr. Gugliemo Camera put it in this way, “Just as there is nothing more beautiful than what comes out of the good heart, so there is nothing worse than what comes out from a bad heart."[1]
The risk will be for each one of us to increase the juggle that can make our hearts as a cryptic. However, in our "liquid society" as qualifies Zygmunt Bauman (Liquid modernity, Policy Press, Cambridge, 2000.) it is possible to say that the heart is the locus, the compendium of human being in which our concrete life is expressed. The heart is also the fountain and roots of all energy, convictions, passion et choices.
Jesus as the symbol of love
As Pope Francis emphasizes, "it is only by starting from the heart that our communities will succeed in uniting and reconciling differing minds, so that the Spirit can guide us in unity as brothers and sisters. Reconciliation and peace are also born of the heart. The heart of Christ is 'ecstasy’, openness, gift and encounter. In that heart, we learn to relate to one another in wholesome and happy ways, and to build up in this world God's kingdom of love and justice." (Dilexit Nos, #28) This means that in Christ, we discover the possibility of the relation between men and women. The grace we receive through the heart of Jesus helps us to love unconditionally, and to promote the reign of justice and peace. This echoes the prayer of saint Francis of Assisi, "Lord, make me an instrument of peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love;..." In the same line, if we are able to love without hypocrisy, our lives become like a big tree which can help others for shelter. This is only possible if Christ is for us" the heart of the world, and if the paschal mystery is the center of history.
Some ingredients for our discipleship
Dilexit Nos suggests some ingredients that can increase our zeal as disciples of Jesus. In this document, we discover that it is possible to acquire the attitudes which reflect the heart of Jesus. First of all, the adoration of Jesus; second, the living heart of Jesus christ, and finally, the twofold sense of love.
a. Adoration of Jesus christ
Pope Francis says that “it is essential to realize that our relationship to the Person of Jesus Christ is one of friendship and adoration, drawn by the love represented under the image of his heart. (Dilexit Nos,# 49) Therefore, the Sacred heart symbolizes the divine and human love that Jesus has for Father and for us.
b. The living heart of Christ
This is "the object of our worship, for it is part of his holy risen body, which is inseparable from the Son of God who assumed that body forever. We worship it because it is the heart of the Person of the Word, to whom it is inseparably united. (Dilexit Nos, #50)
c. Twofold sense of love
We noticed that from the heart's intentions come the desires and the deepest decisions that confirmed our actions. If we want to be perfect in love, we must "love God and the neighbor" (cf. Mt 22: 36-40). Therefore, "we can not attain our fulfilment as human beings unless we open our hearts to others; only trough love do we become fully ourselves. The deepest part of us, and created for love, and will fulfil God's plan only if we learn to love." (Dilexit Nos, #60) Love is the right way for those who want to grow in the paths of Jesus, who unmeasurably loves all of us.
Finally, as pilgrims of hope, let this beautiful Lenten season help us to increase our faith, to go on in our devotion, and to have a deep love by keeping a heart free of all that tarnishes love: that is holiness." (Gaudete et Exultate, #86) With Pope Francis, let us ask our Lord Jesus Christ "to grant that his Sacred Heart may continue to pour forth the streams of living water that can heal the hurt we have caused, and strengthen our ability to love and serve others, and inspire us to journey towards a just, solidary and fraternal world, until that day when we will rejoice in celebrating together the banquet of the heavenly kingdom in the presence of the risen Lord, who harmonizes all our differences in the light that radiates perpetually from his open heart. May he be blessed forever." (Dilexit Nos, #220)
[1] Guliermo CAMERA, The personal project of life of Blessed Guido Maria Conforti, Centre saveriano Animazione Missionari, Roma, 2007, p. 30.)
