Bishop Raffaello Martinelli, with the clarity that distinguishes him, gives us tools to enter into the beauty of Dilexit nos, highlighting those fundamental elements that allow us to read it in a new light. Below is the first part of his reflection; tomorrow he will give us the second part. Let us discover together the beauty of Pope Francis’s fourth encyclical!

DILEXIT NOS

Encyclical Letter of Pope Francis
on the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus Christ

Presentation by His Excellency Bishop Raffaello Martinelli
PART ONE

How is the encyclical structured?

The encyclical, written by the Pope in Spanish and officially presented on October 24, 2024, consists of approximately 45 pages, with 220 paragraphs.
The title recalls a passage from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “He loved us” (Rom 8:37), Saint Paul says, referring to Christ.
Dilexit nos is Francis’s fourth encyclical, following: Lumen fidei (June 29, 2013), written together with Benedict XVI; Laudato si’ (May 24, 2015) on the environmental crisis and the need to care for Creation; Fratelli tutti (October 3, 2020).

It is divided into 5 parts:

• Part I: The importance of the heart (nos. 2-31)
• Part II: Gestures and words of love (nos. 32-47)
• Part III: This is the heart that has loved so greatly (nos. 48-91)
• Part IV: The love that gives us drink (nos. 92-163)
• Part V: Love for love (nos. 164-216)

Pope Francis announced on June 5, 2024, during the general audience, a document on the Sacred Heart to be connected with the 350th anniversary of the first manifestation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690): “I am pleased to prepare a document that gathers the valuable reflections of earlier magisterial texts and of a long history reaching back to Sacred Scripture, in order to propose this devotion, rich in spiritual beauty, anew to the whole Church today. I believe it will do us much good to meditate on various aspects of the Lord’s love that can shed light on the path of ecclesial renewal; but also to say something meaningful to a world that seems to have lost its heart.”

What characteristics does the encyclical have?

• It begins with Pope Francis’s spiritual experience, distressed by the many wars, violence, socioeconomic inequalities, consumerism and the anti-human use of technology (cf. no. 31); but the Pope also writes that “a good part of the reflections in this first part were inspired by unpublished writings of Father Diego Fares, S.J. May the Lord receive him into His holy glory” (note 1 to no. 2). Moreover, as he had already announced, he intends to gather what has been written and lived throughout the long history of devotion to the Sacred Heart, which goes back to Sacred Scripture.
  
• It also offers the key to interpreting the entire magisterium of this Pope, and in particular his previous encyclicals, as he himself writes: “What this document expresses makes it possible to discover that what is written in the social Encyclicals Laudato si’ and Fratelli tutti is not unrelated to our encounter with the love of Jesus Christ, because, by drinking from this love, we become capable of weaving fraternal bonds, recognizing the dignity of every human being and caring together for our common home” (no. 217).
• The approach of the encyclical is distinctly Christological. At its center is Christ the Lord and His love for all humanity, mindful of the words, “learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart” (Mt 11:29). “Devotion to the Heart of Christ is not the worship of an organ separate from the Person of Jesus. What we contemplate and adore is Jesus Christ in his entirety, the Son of God made man, represented in an image where his heart is emphasized” (no. 48): “He alone can free us from this fever in which there is no longer room for a freely given love” (no. 218). Therefore, every person can perceive that God loves them, especially through the gift of His Son Jesus of Nazareth, thanks to whom, with the Holy Spirit who brings about the “attraction toward the Father” (no. 76), each person can experience being loved forever, in Jesus. It is He who first loves us with His whole being (cf. no. 67), and bends all the way down to our humanity to lift us up (cf. no. 69). “A human heart that makes room for Christ’s love through complete trust […] becomes capable of loving others as Christ did, making itself small and close to everyone” (no. 203).

READ AN EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK

What importance does the encyclical give to the heart?

“The symbol of the heart is often used to express the love of Jesus. Some may wonder whether it still has a valid meaning. But when we are tempted to remain on the surface, to live in a rush without ultimately knowing why, to become insatiable consumers and slaves to the mechanisms of a market that has no interest in the meaning of our existence, we need to recover the importance of the heart” (no. 2).
The encyclical presents the heart as the unifying center of the person: “everything comes down to the heart” (no. 3); “the heart is the place of sincerity, where one can neither deceive nor dissimulate” (no. 5); “a personal center where the only reality capable of unifying everything is, ultimately, love” (no. 10); “only the heart creates intimacy, the true closeness between two beings” (no. 12). Our heart, in fact, “united with that of Christ is capable of this social miracle” of building with us and among us, “in this world, the Kingdom of love and justice” (no. 28). Everything we experience, whether small or great, is “unified in the heart” (no. 21), as happened with Mary Most Holy, “who looked with her heart” (no. 19) and who “treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:19).
The Second Vatican Council itself writes that “the imbalances from which the modern world suffers are linked with that more basic imbalance which is rooted in the human heart” (Gaudium et Spes, 10 and 14).
Hence the Pope’s appeal: “Let us go to the Heart of Christ … which is a blazing furnace of divine and human love and is the greatest fullness that human beings can attain” (no. 30), since “God does not love us in words; he draws near, and in being close to us he gives us his love with all possible tenderness” (no. 36). Going to the heart of Christ requires that we not remain enclosed within our own hearts, closed in on ourselves, since “our heart is not self-sufficient; it is fragile and wounded” (no. 30), but that we dwell, with our heart, in the Heart of Christ, because “it is there, in that Heart, that we finally recognize ourselves and learn to love” (no. 30). In this way it will be possible to give a heart to our heart and to “this earth, and reinvent love where we think the capacity to love has died forever” (no. 218).

Why does the importance of the heart need to be rediscovered in today’s world?

It needs to be rediscovered, particularly and urgently, in today’s world, because it:

• is dominated by the power and fever of money: “Today everything is bought and paid for, and it seems that the very meaning of dignity depends on things obtained through the power of money. We are driven only to accumulate, consume and distract ourselves, imprisoned by a degrading system that prevents us from looking beyond our immediate and petty needs” (no. 218);
• is secularized, increasingly dominated “by narcissism and self-referentiality” (no. 17), “which aspires to a world free from God. Added to this is the fact that various forms of religiosity without reference to a personal relationship with a God of love are multiplying in society” (no. 87);
• is often marked by a Christianity “that has forgotten the tenderness of faith, the joy of dedication to service, the fervor of mission from person to person, being captivated by the beauty of Christ, the moving gratitude for the friendship He offers and for the ultimate meaning He gives to personal life” (no. 88);
• is characterized by the frequent dualism “of communities and pastors focused only on external activities, structural reforms devoid of the Gospel, obsessive organizations, worldly projects, secularized reflections” (no. 89).

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