The devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is something that one is inclined to toss into the sentimental garbage bin, until one finds its origins.
Gertrude of Hackeborn (1232–1292) gave shelter to our Mechtild of Magdeburg (1210-1297) in the convent of Helfta, of which she was the abbess. There, Mechtild was recognized as a spiritual teacher and was able to impart the treasures of her wisdom to two other women: one also named Gertrude, and the other also named Mechtild. These two slightly younger women are credited with the origins of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Mechtild of Hackeborn (1240-1298), who was also a musician of great talent, wrote a book called The Book of Special Graces, which became immediately known in many places, including Florence. Gertrude of Helfta (1256-1302) wrote a book called Herald of Divine Love, which, some two centuries later, at the time of the invention of printing, was edited, published, and widely read. It became one of the books cherished by Teresa of Avila (1515-1582).
What a place must have been the Cistercian monastery of Helfta when these four women lived there! Each of them received visions and special messages, which gave them confidence in their own personal experience of the divine, while they collaborated with each other, rather than fighting for prestige.
It has been noticed that the most repeated word in the first portion of The Book of Special Graces is “splendor,” and I can’t help thinking how this perfectly matches the via positiva as described by Matthew Fox, whose core message is awe and wonder at the splendor of creation.
As for the notion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the best way to understand it resides in a vision reported in the Herald of Divine Love. The Beloved lets Gertude put her ear to his breast, and she hears two pulsations, just as in the case of people. She wonders, and Jesus explains to her that the human heart keeps the human body going; the divine Heart keeps the universe going. Moreover, with the first pulsation, the Sacred Heart brings to salvation entire groups of sinners; with the second pulsation, it also brings to salvation some just people — in that order, mind you!
The devotion to the Sacred Heart — whatever it might have become — had originally a cosmic scope. It had to do with how divine beauty pervades the universe, and how divine love keeps the universe alive, including all kinds of people, good and bad.
It is in this cosmic context that innumerable images of the relationship with the divine related in these books must be understood. The “golden tube” which departs from the heart of Jesus and fills Gertrude with all the divine qualities; the heart of Jesus transforming itself into a woman’s breast at which she can feed; and so on and so forth.
“God is love” was not for these women a notion, but a lived reality. Understanding the divine as the beating heart of the cosmos, which also feeds and fills each individual heart, is something that we as moderns struggle with mightily. But between premodern folk and ourselves of the modern age, who is wiser?
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Banner Image: This mosaic of Christ revealing his Sacred Heart to St Margaret Mary Alacoque is in the Basilica of Sacre Coeur in Paris (depicted in the background). Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. on Flickr.
Queries for Contemplation
Is the metaphor of the Sacred Cosmic Heart helping you in your spiritual path? Why or why not?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
Prayer: A Radical Response to Life
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
6 thoughts on “The Sacred Heart”
Worth reading on the topic of The Sacred Heart is the first of “Three stories in the style of Benson” written by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin while he served on the front lines near Verdun during the First World War. Titled “The Picture”, it relates (in a disguised identity) a mystical experience the author had while contemplating a picture “representing Christ offering his heart to men.” See https://www.religion-online.org/book-chapter/chapter-2-christ-in-the-world-of-matter/
Thank you Daniel for the link to the reading of The Picture. It was a gift to start the day.
Yes! Beautiful DM today G.G.! The enclosed photograph of the “0rion nebula appearing as a glowing heart” is amazing! If you look closely at the photograph, there seems to be a human feminine figure, which symbolizes the reality that the human heart and the Sacred Cosmic Heart of LOVE & BEAUTY are intimately related and ONE….
My first introduction to Devotion to Sacred Heart is the cloth image. The story of St Margaret has been with me ever since. I was 10 yrs old now I am 85. I am so very grateful. First Friday and then First Saturday mass. Life long love to this image of Christ. Thank you
I am a mystic — like Meister Eckhart, like Moses, like many people in several religions.
And I also affirm the image of this Sacred Heart of Jesus as an affirmation and source of the deepening of God’s wonder.
There are many Paths of the (Ultimately One) Truth, and many Images and words that bring us there. We do not have to travel far, or access marvels, to carry God’s Splendor and act in God’s Good Faith. It is HERE, in our Being and in those Beings and Things around us. We only need to open our Hearts, Eyes, Ears, and Self.
If we open to God, if we open to Truth, we will be led to deeper and fuller Understanding.
I was born on the feast day of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, who was a promulgator of the Sacred heart of Jesus. I had seen the pictures of this golden heart, with beams of light pouring from it, radiating outward in splendour. When I was in my 40s, my dad had congestive heart failure, and it was terrible to watch him struggle to breathe. The blood was backing up into the lungs, because the heart was so weak. I had a dream in which he could rest in the sacred heart, and let IT pump for him. He got help from a wonderful cardiologist as well, who was able to give him a few more years of life, on very low cardiac output. In my belief, it was the Sacred Heart doing the work through her. But also, he DID put his faith into having the Sacred Heart of Jesus pump his heart for him, and feeling that he was being held in that light. Sometimes an image is worth a thousand words, and that image stays with me, as the one which helped keep my father in the arms of God, the last few years of his life; and able to breathe and live. He died of a terminal arrythmia, in his own bed, at home, not in the hospital. The doctor had told me it would be thus, and it would be fast. He was taking a nap in the afternoon, after walking in the garden and pulling a couple of weeds. I thank God, for that peaceful death, and for the years when the Sacred Heart was pumping his blood for him.