(ANS – Rome) – In the fifth text published by Don Bosco in the Salesian Bulletin of 1886, written by Fr. John Bonetti, he reflects on the spread of devotion to the Sacred Heart, starting from the consecration in 1686 in Paray-le-Monial until the consecration of the universal Church in the 19th century. The article was published in June of that year and therefore takes on a special significance, as June is the month dedicated to the celebration of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
The text discusses the reasons for the growing influence of this devotion, which, for the author, is a concrete response to one of the most serious evils of the time: indifference and the cooling of charity.
On the contrary, devotion to the Heart of Jesus has as its main purpose the reawakening of love, the principle of all virtues and of the very life of Christianity. It is not a matter of worshipping an isolated physical organ, but of venerating what that Heart represents.
He writes: ‘Even the fingers, for example, even the hands of the body of Jesus Christ deserve worship; yet no feast is celebrated, nor will any ever be celebrated, in their honor (…). If, therefore, we pay special worship to the Heart of Jesus, it is particularly for the invisible or supersensible object of which the Heart of Jesus is the spontaneous and natural reminder: that is, for the love with which he loved us.’
An active and effective love, manifested in Creation, Redemption, and Glorification.
Drawing on the theology of St. Justin, the reflection then goes on to point out that Christ, the Incarnate Word, is Creator, Redeemer, and Glorifier. For the love of the Heart of Jesus runs through the entire history of salvation: from the creation of Adam, formed in the image of the future Christ, to the last days of humanity, upon which the wind of the Holy Spirit continues to blow through the immanent presence of the Church.
With the Incarnation, ‘in the fullness of time,’ this love becomes visible and opens the way to the phase of Redemption. Jesus presents himself to the world in the most humble form: a fragile child in Mary’s arms. His life is a continuous act of self-giving: in poverty, in preaching, in miracles, in the Passion, and finally in the Cross and in the Eucharist, called ‘the genesis of Christian society.’
The text concludes by affirming that Christ’s love does not end with Redemption, but continues precisely in Glorification, through the action of the Catholic Church. This Church, born from the open side of Christ, like a new Eve, is the greatest gift of the glorified Heart of Jesus.
For this reason, every Christian is invited to recognize and love this Heart and, once again, to contribute generously to the construction of the Temple of the Sacred Heart in Rome, in the hope that every Italian diocese will participate in this monument of faith, expiation and gratitude towards Christ and his Vicar, the Pope.
The full text of the article written for the 1886 Salesian Bulletin is available in the original Italian version of the time, below.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION:
The Heart of Jesus and the Consolations of the Supernatural
It was two centuries ago on May 31, 1877, since that humble and most pious Salesian virgin, Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, saw the promises made to her by the Divine Redeemer finally fulfilled in the public consecration to the Heart of Jesus of the house of Paray-le-Monial, and the most purely ardent vows of her heart paid off. That consecration marked in its modest beginnings the future consecration of the entire Catholic Church, which we witnessed in our day; that first humble chapel enclosed in its simple grandeur the sumptuous and monumental temples of the second half of the 19th century; those first public honors were like the twilight harbinger of that broad and universal cult, to which we see our age taken for the Heart of Jesus. Now how and whence did this happen? Why should this devotion be particularly predestined to such a sweetly salutary empire and regenerating influence? The reason is clear; it is because, above all, in its nature and object, it presents us with the most suitable remedy for that terrible and most widespread disease of present-day society, which is the cooling of charity caused by the overabundance of iniquity, a cooling which Jesus Christ had already announced as the principal sign heralding the approaching end of the world. Et quoniam abundavit iniquitas, refrigescet charitas multorum (MATTH. XXIV, 12). And the reawakening of charity, or of love, is precisely what constitutes the principal purpose and the noblest fruit of this most sweet devotion. The Heart of Jesus, which gives its name to both the devotion and the feast, is indeed its object, since it, like every other part of His most holy body, requires for its inseparable union with the Word not only all our affection, but also all our full and entire adoration. But it is the visible or sensible object, as you wish, which is sufficient to be worthy of worship, but would not be sufficient for the celebration of a particular feast. Even the fingers, for example, even the hands of the body of Jesus Christ deserve a cult of adoration; and yet they are not celebrated, nor will their feast ever be celebrated, since the Church has already forbidden for centuries to depict separately one or another part of that most sacred Body. If, therefore, we pay special worship to the Heart of Jesus, if this worship now especially has all the particular reasons to be deeply known and widely propagated, it is especially for the invisible or supersensible object, of which the Heart of Jesus is the spontaneous and natural memory, that is, for the love with which he loved us. Yes, love, the sun of the soul, from which emanate the different rays, which are humility, chastity, piety and the like; the love of which, according to the very wise phrase of St. Augustine, our very virtues, even the most noble and sublime, are but an order; the love which with its divine flame and its supernatural power warms and sustains all of Christianity; the love which is the principle and center of all the divine and human life of Jesus.
But this love is intrinsically and effectively operative, and we recognize this operative virtue in the world of the spirit, as in the world of matter, since both are but a manifestation of the love of Jesus Christ.
According to the philosopher and martyr St. Justin (Apolog. 11), there are three names with which the second Person of the Holy Trinity is designated in Scripture, that is, the Word for eternal generation from the Father, Christ, that is, King and Lord, or Creator, and Jesus who is Savior or Redeemer. But whatever one wants to use of these three names, the person to whom they are addressed is always and entirely one, that is, the Son of God, at the same time Creator, Redeemer and Glorifier. Woe to anyone who divides in any way Jesus Christ, who is always one and indivisible! To consider the life of Jesus only from the Incarnation is to diminish its sacrosanct design, since the idea of the Incarnation cannot be absolutely separated from the idea of Creation, which really presupposes it, as the morning twilight presupposes the existence of the sun. Mysterium Incarnationis, wrote that high genius of St. Thomas, est quoddam generale principium, ad quod omnia Angelorum et hominem officia ordinantur (P, l, q. LvII). The Incarnation is the end, the decorum, the fulfillment of creation and is to it as the whole and the perfect to the halved and imperfect.
Now the devotion and the feast of the Heart of Jesus, in that which is directed to always keep before us the love of Him, keeps in mind the work, the extrinsic manifestation of this love, work and manifestation that are carried out gradually in the six days of creation and are accomplished in the seventh of the Incarnation. From here comes not only the intrinsic excellence, but the sovereign opportunity of this devotion in our days, in which Satan and his followers aim to demolish not only a part, but the whole supernatural order, on which Catholic Christianity is founded.
And here we would like to be able to conveniently portray, as far as a finite mind is allowed to understand an infinite action, the external manifestations of this operative love of the Heart of Jesus, Creator, Redeemer and Glorifier. Behold, the Ancient of the days of the prophet Daniel (Chap. VII, 9), the firstborn of all the creatures of the Apostle Paul (Ad Coloss. chap. 1. 15), looking out upon the formless chaos and drawing forth with his omnipotent voice the things that are not as those that are, beginning from the firmament up to the formation of man. And so that the latter may never lose the idea of his Creator, he shapes for him a body on the model of the future Christ, Adae qui est forma futuri (Ad Rom. V. 14), he creates for him a soul endowed in the image of the Most Holy Trinity with intellect, will and active power to bring into effect what he has thought and willed. He converses familiarly with him, he feeds him his language, he fills his heart with discernment and his intellect with his lights, he finally makes him the master and lord of all creation. And even when man transgresses and sins, He does not abandon him; Christ and Creator becomes Jesus and Savior to him with the consoling image of future redemption, which he expressly places before him.
Nor does his affectionate care stop here. Father, teacher and doctor he encourages him to do good, he dispels the darkness of his darkened intellect and heals the wounds of his deteriorated heart.
But, alas! Man’s ingratitude crosses every boundary; all flesh has corrupted its way and the Heart of Jesus, seized by intimate pain, tactus dolore cordis intrinsecus (Genesis, VI, 6), decides to wipe it from the face of the earth with the universal flood. But here too, how much mercy precedes, accompanies and follows this act of justice! It is he, in fact, who a good one hundred years before ordered Noah to build the ark for the salutary repentance of the wicked; he who, before the floodgates of heaven open, closes the door of the ark on the outside, so that the eight righteous may arrive in safety; he who after 40 days and 40 nights goes to free them, accepts the sacrifice offered to him, renews all the teaching and all the precepts already given to Adam, and reconfirms to the fortunate survivors the dominion over all created things. Let man, ever ungrateful, be proud and dream of building a tower that, to avoid future punishment, will touch the sky with its summit. If the Heart of Jesus, as God, punishes with the confusion of languages, as a lover of man, He gives way to mercy, He chooses the family of Abraham and his descendants, and forms with them a people of predilection, to whom He entrusts the entire deposit of His laws and His doctrine, and whom He Himself visibly rules and governs. And who does not know the tenderness of the Heart of Jesus toward this people, recalcitrant at every turn to His advice, too often insensitive to His benefits, hard and coarse to continually test their patience!
But behold, the fullness of time dawns and with it the flooding, so to speak, without limits and without boundaries of the tenderness of the Heart of Jesus. By one of those divine economies, which make our most holy faith so wonderfully sublime and lovable, the world, that is, the creatures that came from the Father through the Word, return to the Father through the Word himself, who takes on human nature and carries out the mission entrusted to him by eternal decree to satisfy divine justice and for the salvation of humanity. From an immaculate Virgin, whom he associates with co-redeemer, from a Virgin richest in gifts of nature and grace, compendium of all the immense infinite benefits of his Heart, from this Virgin, in whom he has infused and shared his love for man, Jesus is born poor and neglected; in the arms of this Virgin and Mother and in the form of a charming and lovable child he presents himself to the affection of men. Circumcised, subjected to hunger, cold and all human infirmities, a refugee in Egypt, obscure and as if annihilated for 30 years in the house of a humble blacksmith, it seems that His Heart studies all the most affectionate industries, so that man does not lose his way, oppressed by the glory of His divine majesty. And when He begins His public life, His is nothing but a passing from benefit to benefit, from favor to favor, until the consummation on the cross, in which Christ, our King and Lord, accomplishes as Jesus the Savior the sublime work of Redemption, presenting Himself to the Father with the principle of expiation on the right and with that of solidarity on the left side of His most lovable Heart. And of this solidarity he offers us ineffable proof in the Eucharist, in which the self-denial of him God-Man is revealed for love for the sake of love, as in death his self-denial appeared for love for the sake of justice, in the Eucharist deservedly called the genesis of Christian society. At the foot of the Cross, observes a profound intellect, it is man in the solitude of his nature to be redeemed, at the Eucharistic table sits the man to be saved in the multitude of individuals.
But do the superhuman manifestations of the Heart of Jesus end with Creation and Redemption? No, never! The life of Jesus, as we have already said, is a life of love, and love is eternal, like the principle from which it emanates. And He continues this love at the right hand of the Father, where He ascended to bestow ever greater gifts upon men, and from where He sent the Holy Spirit, who is the substantial love of the Father and the Son. And here who can say what a wide field opens up before us to explore the first and greatest gift of the Heart of Jesus the Glorifier, which is the Catholic Church. The Church! And who will give us words suited to the lofty idea? The Church, this new Eve, who emerges alive from the side of the new Adam Jesus, in the very act in which the last drops of his blood spill onto the earth, thus bearing with them the two indelible imprints of love and pain. The Church, chair of truth (for there is no reason unless taught) presided over by a sovereign Moses, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, who, assisted by the virtue of the Eternal, marks its steps with his infallible teaching, and together with him and under him, new mitered Aarons who divide the faithful and guide the ranks on the path that leads to Jesus, the way, the truth and the life. The Church with its orderly phalanxes and its shining pavilions. The Church… And oh! Why will we not recognize in their sublime depth and breadth the inestimable benefits that come to us from the Heart of Jesus, Creator, Redeemer and Glorifier? And how long will we delay in understanding that it is from the Heart of Jesus, known as it is, alive and entire in the Church, that the blessing of man and civil society must come? Why will we not show with deeds the gratitude and love that we owe him, in this month especially sacred to him? And since there rises there in the Eternal City, which posterity will one day call the Rome of the Sacred Heart, a temple dedicated to Him, since the Pope, the most wise Leo XIII, invites all Christian humanity to contribute to this monument of expiation, love and faith, since the Most Eminent Pastor of the Archdiocese of Turin, venerated and faithful echo of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, renews his most noble appeal and this appeal closes on July 2nd, oh! May this month not pass without all of us having taken part in this eminently religious, moral and civil work, encouraging those of us who know and are friends. How beautiful it will be to see engraved on that monumental façade the names of the 263 Dioceses of Italy in perpetual memory of the Immortal Deed! How consoling it will be to see there our sure salvation against the filthy river, which threatens us on every side! Oh! then the song of adoration and love, which will sound under the sacred vaults of the temple of the Heart of Jesus, will also be the song of gratitude and devotion to his august Vicar, and the monument of humanity saved to the Heart of Jesus, will also be the monument of humanity grateful to the Vicar of Jesus Christ.
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