PART 1
Until the release of Dilexit nos in October 2024, the encyclicals of the late Pope Francis (1936-2025) had largely focused on the social teaching of the Catholic Church. With his fourth encyclical, he turns his attention to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a central feature of private Catholic devotion.
Dilexit nos (“He loved us,” hereafter DN) is the first post-Vatican II papal encyclical dedicated to the Sacred Heart. The three previous documents were Lumen fidei (“The Light of Faith,” 2013, largely composed by Francis’s predecessor pope Benedict XVI), Laudato si (“Praise Be to You,” 2015), and Fratelli tutti (“All Brothers,” 2020). I wrote on Laudato si here in 2015 on account of its fine treatment of environmental care in relation to Christian belief.
In 1956, Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Haurietis aquas outlined how devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus fosters spiritual transformation. Pope Pius Xi’s Miserentissimus Redemptor (1928) emphasised the importance of the Feast of the Sacred Heart as a day of reparation, and Francis reinforces this emphasis in his recent encyclical. Pope Leo XIII’s Annum sacrum (1899) took the bold step of consecrating the entire human race to the Sacred Heart. Other papal encyclicals did not address the subject in detail, although Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI all explicitly encouraged devotion to the Sacred Heart through their teachings and devotion.
The 2024 encyclical is subtitled, “On the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ.” It sets forth philosophical, biblical and doctrinal aspects of the Sacred Heart before turning to the writings of St Margaret Mary (or Marguerite Marie) Alacoque of Paray le Monial (1647-1690) on the 350th anniversary of “The Apparitions,” the publication of which undergirds devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in its modern form. Margaret was beatified in 1864 by Pope Pius IX, and canonised by Pope Benedict XV in 1920. DN also has special significance for interpreting Laudato si and Fratelli tutti. In section 217, Pope Francis stated that the content of those two social encyclicals “is not foreign to our encounter with the love of Jesus Christ, because, by drinking from this love, we become capable of weaving fraternal bonds, of recognizing the dignity of every human being and of taking care of our common home together.”
Dilexit nos runs to about 30,000 words and has five chapters. The first focuses on the human “heart,” classically the seat of the emotions, which Francis believes to be crucial for constructive engagement with the modern technological world and especially the rise of artificial intelligence. Chapter 2 draws from the canonical Gospels and elsewhere to demonstrate the love of Jesus for humankind. Chapter 3 invites readers to “contemplate Christ in all the beauty and richness of his humanity and divinity” as they engage devotionally with the Sacred Heart tradition (s. ). Chapter 4 examines the history of mystical theology related to the Sacred Heart. Francis states that such devotion is not a mere relic of the past but “a fine spirituality suited to other times” (s. 149). In the final chapter, Francis encourages a personal response of encounter with the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the hope that this practice may “revive love wherever we think that the ability to love has been definitively lost” (s. 218).
What is the Sacred Heart? Devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is a widely recognised Catholic spiritual practice. The symbol used in such devotion is generally associated with the Sacré Coeur in Paris where, between 1673 and 1675, Margaret Mary Alacoque recorded her revelations of the physical heart of Jesus, crowned with thorns and ablaze. Today, the Basilica of Sacré Coeur de Montmartre occupies the site. However, earlier forms of Catholic mysticism also employed the notion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in expressing devotion to Christ. For example, in her Herald of Divine Love, Gertrude the Great (1256-1302) recorded visions of the heart of Jesus; and St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) referred to the image of a heart-wound in Jesus’s side in his commentary on the Song of Songs (cf Jn 19:34; 20:20-25).
Today, hundreds of churches and church institutions are dedicated to the Sacred Heart, and images of a smiling Jesus holding his pierced heart, or with the pierced heart visible in his open abdominal cavity, or hovering before it, are common in Catholic homes and other places of worship. In New Testament times, the “heart” was understood as a metaphor for what we would call the inner self, the locus of psychological and spiritual life. The earliest Christians associated the water flowing from the side of Christ at his Crucifixion with the “rivers of living water” flowing “from his heart.”
By the eleventh century, the heart of Jesus was linked to mystical notions of his physical suffering and death. St Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), meditating on the crucifixion, describes a vision of the pierced heart of Jesus as a revelation of divine love (Patrologia Latina, 158.761-762). St Bonaventure (Vitis Mystica) and Ubertino da Casale (Arbor vitae crucifixae Jesu) wrote in a similar way. Devotion to the Sacred Heart is also seen in Catherine of Siena, Dorothy of Montau, and especially Margaret Mary Alacoque. Moreover, in Pensées 277-278, Blaise Pascal famously claims that reason alone is insufficient for the contemplation of God whereas “the heart has reasons that reason knows not,” a reference linked to devotion to the Sacred Heart.
In DN, Francis expresses a concern that modern social life has replaced the classical notion of “heart” with bland rationalism and materialism. He affirms the importance of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus to counter such a turn, but warned against an opposite other-worldly mysticism separating spirituality from daily life. Francis claims that pursuit of “a spirituality without flesh,” or a “disembodied transcendence” ignores the tangible ways in which we encounter the love of God in our everyday lives.” He encourages devotion to the Sacred Heart as a means of focusing our prayers on the indivisible union of deity and humanity in Christ “so that we may be embraced by his human and divine love” (s. 49).
Francis also echoes Pope John Paul II’s teaching that devotion to the Sacred Heart “was a response to the Jansenist rigour, which ended up disregarding God’s infinite mercy” (s. 80). Advocacy of devotion to the Sacred Heart was intended as a corrective to Jansenism, leading to “a clearer realization that in the Eucharist the merciful and ever-present love of the heart of Christ invites us to union with him” (s. 84).
Seeking to link the thought of DN to his previous encyclicals, Francis highlights in several places the social benefits of devotion to the Sacred Heart. He says that, “Living as we do in an age of superficiality, rushing frenetically from one thing to another without really knowing why, and ending up as insatiable consumers and slaves to the mechanisms of a market unconcerned about the deeper meaning of our lives, all of us need to rediscover the importance of the heart” (s. 2). In s. 46, Francis states that
The cross is Jesus’ most eloquent word of love. A word that is not shallow, sentimental or merely edifying. It is love, sheer love. That is why Saint Paul, struggling to find the right words to describe his relationship with Christ, could speak of ‘the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal 2:20). This was Paul’s deepest conviction: the knowledge that he was loved.
Further, in s. 206, Francis quotes from a 1999 Letter of St John Paul II:
Consecration to the heart of Christ is thus ‘to be seen in relation to the Church’s missionary activity, since it responds to the desire of Jesus’ heart to spread throughout the world, through the members of his Body, his complete commitment to the Kingdom.’ As a result, ‘through the witness of Christians, love will be poured into human hearts, to build up the body of Christ which is the Church, and to build a society of justice, peace and fraternity.’
For ethical formation, he says, we should turn first to the example of love demonstrated by Christ (s. 219); the “heart” rather than the imperatives of capitalism and consumerism should inform ethical action (s. 218). He explicitly favours a posture of nonviolence, disrupting cycles of violence, based on the teaching of Jesus (s. 238; cf s. 217). The social fragmentation of modern individualism that leads to isolation and despair, and the ethical challenges of modern technology and artificial intelligence that threaten to undermine human dignity, are addressed by devotion to the Sacred Heart. “When our hearts are united with the heart of Christ, we are capable of the social miracle of building the kingdom of God” (s. 28).
Part 2 of this article examines Pope Francis’s use of Scripture in Dilexit nos.
Rev Dr Rod Benson is General Secretary of the NSW Ecumenical Council and a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia serving at North Rocks Community Church. Copyright © 2025 Rod Benson.
Image source: vermontcatholic.org
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