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 HEART

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HEART

to the love of which this Heart is the hving and ex- pressive symbol. On this point the devotion re- quires no justification, as it is to the Person of Jesus that it is directed; but to the Person as inseparable from His Divinity. Jesus, the living apparition of the goodness of God and of His paternal love, Jesus infinitely loving and amiable, studied in the principal manifestations of His love, is the object of the de- votion to the Sacred Heart, as indeed He is the object of the Christian religion. The difficulty lies in the union of the heart and love, in the relation which the devotion supposes between the one and the other. Is not this an error long since discarded? If so, it remains to examine whether the devotion, considered in this respect, is well founded.

(iii) Philosophical and scientific foundations. — In this respect there has been some uncertainty amongst theologians, not as regards the basis of things, but in the matter of explanations. Sometimes they have spoken as if the heart were the organ of love, but this point has no bearing on the devotion, for which it suffices that the heart be the symbol of love, and that, for the basis of the symbolism, a real connexion exist between the heart and the emotions. Now, the sym- bolism of the heart is a fact and every one feels that in the heart there is a sort of an echo of our sentiments. The physiological study of this resonance may be very interesting, but it is in no wise necessary to the de- votion, as its foimdation is a fact attested by daily experience, a fact which physiological study confirms and of which it determines the conditions, but which neither supposes this study nor any special acquaint- ance with its subject.

(3) The proper act of the devotion. — This act is required l)y the very oliject of the devotion, since devotion to the love of Jesus for us should be pre- eminently a devotion of love for Jesus. It is charac- terized by a reciprocation of love; its aim is to love Jesus who has so loved us, to return love for love. Since, moreover, the love of Jesus manifests itself to the devout soul as a love despised and outraged, especially in the Eucharist, the love expressed in the devotion naturally assumes a character of reparation, and hence the importance of acts of atonement, the Communion of reparation, and compassion for Jesus suffering. But no .sjiecial act, no practice whatever, can exhaust the riches of the devotion to the Sacred Heart. The love which is its soul embraces all and, the better one understands it, the more firmly is he convinced that nothing can vie with it for making Jesus live in us and for bringing him who lives by it to love God, in union with Jesus, with all his heart, all his soul, and all his strength.

The idea of the devotion as it h;us been set forth above is not a priori: it is dedueed from facts and texts. On each point proofs abound, the principal ones being grouped in Bainvel, La devotion au Sacre Cxur de Jesus (Paris, 1906). Therein will also be found all the necessary bibliographical information too detailed to be given here.

Space does not permit replies to all the attacks directed against the devotion. On this point consult du Bouays de la Begassiicre in Diet. Apotogelique (Alfes edition, Paris, 1909).

For doctrinal explanation see Croiset. La devotion au Sarre- Cceur de Jesus-Christ (Lyons, 1691 )._ This work was placed on the Index in 1704, but withdrawn in 1887, and a new edition according to the third, which had appeared in 1694. was brought out by DE Franciosi (Montreuil-sur-Mer, 1895). de C^Iallifet. UExeellence de la devotion au Sacre Cceur (Lyons, 1733); Nii-les, De rationihus Jestorum SS. Cordis Jesti et purissimi Cordis MaricB (5th ed., 2 vols., 8vo. Innsbruck, 1885): Thomas, La theorie de la devotion au Sacre Cceur de Jesus (Lille, 1885); Teerien, La devotion au Sacre-Cosur de Jesus d'apr^s les docu- ments authentiques et la theologie (Paris, 1893); Rix, Cultus S.S. Cordis Jesu et purissimi Cordis B. Virginis Marim (Freiburg ini Br., 1905): Dalgairns, The Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (London, 1853); Manning, The Glories of the Sacred Heart (London, 1876).

II. Historical Ideas on the Development op THE Devotion. — (1) From the time of St. John and St. Paul there has always been in the Church some- thing like devotion to the love of God, Who so loved the world as to give it His only-begotten Son, and to

the love of Jesus, Who has so loved us as to deliver Himself up for us. But, accurately speaking, this is not the devotion to the Sacred Heart, as it pays no homage to the Heart of Jesus as the symbol of His love for us. From the earliest centuries, in accord- ance with the example of the Evangelist, Christ's open side and the mystery of blood and water were medi- tated upon, and the Church was beheld issuing from the side of Jesus, as Eve came forth from the side of Adam. But there is nothing to indicate that, during the first ten centuries, any worship was rendered the wounded Heart.

(2) It is in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that we find the first unmistakable indications of devotion to the Sacred Heart. Through the wound in the side the wounded Heart was gradually reached, and the wound in the Heart symbolized the wound of love. It was in the fervent atmosphere of the Benedictine or Cistercian monasteries, in the world of Anselmian or Bernardine thought, that the devotion aro.se, al- though it is impossible to say positively what were its first texts or who were its fiirst votaries. To St. Gertrude, St. Mechtilde, and the author of the "Vitis mystica" it was already well known. We cannot state with certainty to whom we are indebted for the "Vitis mystica". Until recent times its authorship had generally been ascribed to St. Bernard and yet, by the late publishers of the beautiful and scholarly Quaracchi edition, it has been attributed, and not without plausible reasons, to St. Bonaventure ("S. Bonaventurse opera omnia", 1898, VIII, LIII sq.). But, be this as it may, it contains one of the most beautiful passages that ever inspired the devotion to the Sacred Heart, one appropriated by the Church for the lessons of the second nocturn of the feast. To St. Mechtilde (d. 129S) and St. Gertrude (d. 1302) it was a familiar devotion which was translated into many beautiful prayers and exercises. What deserves spe- cial mention is the vision of St. Gertrude on the feast of St. John the Evangelist, as it forms an epoch in the history of the devotion. Allowed to rest her head near the wound in the Saviour's side, she heard the beating of the Divine Heart and asked John if, on the night of the Last Supper, he too had felt these delightful pulsations, why he had never spoken of the fact. John replied that this revelation had been reserved for subsequent ages when the world, having grown cold, would have need of it to rekindle its love ("Legatus divinae pietatis", IV, 305; " Revelationes Gertrudians", ed. Poitiers and Paris, 1877).

(3) From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, the devotion was propagated but it did not seem to have developed in itself. It was everywhere practised by privileged souls, and the lives of the saints and annals of different religious congregations, of the Francis- cans, Dominicans, Carthusians, etc., furnish many examples of it. It was nevertheless a private, in- dividual devotion of the mystical order. Nothing of a general movement had been inaugurated, unless one would so regard the propagation of the devotion to the Five Wounds, in which the Wound in the Heart figured most prominently, and for the furtherance of which the Franciscans seem to have laboured.

(4) It appears that in the sixteenth century, the devotion took an onward step and passed from the domain of my.sticism into that of Christian asceticism. It was constituted an objective devotion with prayers already formulated and special exercises of which the value was extolled and the practice commended. This we learn from the WTitings of those two masters of the spiritual life, the pious Lanspergius (d. 1.5.39) of the Carthusians of Cologne, and the devout Louis of Blois (Blosius; d. 1.566), a Benedictine and Abbot of Lie.ssies in Hainaut. To these may be added Blessed John of Avila (d. 1.569) and St. Francis de Sales, the latter belonging to the seventeenth century.

(5) From that time everything betokened an early