Yesterday we read the first part of the valuable contribution by Bishop Raffaello Martinelli to enter into the beauty of Dilexit nos; today we conclude this overview, drawing from the Pope's fourth encyclical the light and loving wisdom that flow from the Sacred Heart of Jesus!

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 TWO

How does the Bible shed new light on the human heart?

The heart “in the Bible and in the early centuries of the Church appeared in the image of the Lord's wounded side, as a source of grace or as a call to an intimate encounter of love” (no. 78).
The Bible “shows that the people who had journeyed through the desert and awaited liberation were promised an abundance of life-giving water” (no. 93).
“The early Christians saw this promise fulfilled in Christ's open side, the source from which new life flows” (no. 96).
“In Christ's pierced Heart, all the expressions of love in the Scriptures are concentrated, written in the flesh” (no. 101).
It is Christ who “shows us that God is closeness, compassion and tenderness” (no. 35), as happens, for example, in his encounters with the Samaritan woman, Nicodemus, the prostitute, the adulterous woman, and the blind man on the road… (cf. nos. 36-46).
Christ's Heart contains a threefold love, as Pope Benedict XVI stated: the sensitive love of his physical heart and his twofold spiritual love: human and divine, in which we find the infinite in the finite (cf. nos. 64-66).
The Pope writes that “we can affirm once again that the Sacred Heart is a synthesis of the Gospel” (no. 83), which enables us to discover that nothing “will ever be able to separate us” from this love of Christ's Heart (Rom 8:39), because Christ himself had assured his disciples: “I have loved you” (Jn 15:9, 12).

Which saints does the Pope mention?

Devotion to the Heart of Christ has involved many saints; some of them are explicitly mentioned by the Pope because they highlighted, practiced, and recommended devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. For this reason too, in 1856 Pope Pius IX extended the feast of the Sacred Heart to the entire Church.
Among the saints mentioned by the Pope are:

• Saint Augustine, who “opened the way to devotion to the Sacred Heart as a place of personal encounter with the Lord” (no. 103),
• Saint Bonaventure (no. 106) and Saint Catherine of Siena, “who see in Christ's open Heart the possibility of a present encounter with such love” (no. 111),
• Saint Francis de Sales, who recognizes in it “a call to complete trust in the mysterious action of his grace” (no. 114),
• Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque (no. 121),
• Saint Claude de la Colombière (nos. 125-128), who connects “Saint Margaret's spiritual experience with the proposal of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola” (no. 143),
• Saint Charles de Foucauld (cf. nos. 129-132), who wishes to let the Heart of Jesus act within him so that he may no longer live, but that the Heart of Jesus may live in him (cf. no. 132),
• Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (cf. 133-142), who “sums everything up in trust, as the best offering pleasing to the Heart of Christ” (no. 138),
• Saint Vincent de Paul, for whom “what God wants is the heart” (no. 148),
• Saint Pio of Pietrelcina and Saint Teresa of Calcutta, who “speak with heartfelt devotion of the Heart of Christ” (no. 149),
• Saint Faustina Kowalska, who reintroduced devotion to the Heart of Christ “with a strong emphasis on the glorious life of the Risen One and on divine mercy… Saint John Paul II closely linked his reflection on mercy with devotion to the heart of Christ” (no. 149).

Pope Francis also highlights the place of the Sacred Heart in the spirituality of the Society of Jesus, which “has always proposed an interior knowledge of the Lord in order to love and serve him better” (no. 144), to the point that the journey of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises culminates in the “Contemplation to receive love, from which arise thanksgiving and the offering of memory, intellect, and will to the Heart, which is the source and origin of every good” (no. 145).

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What fruits flow from devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus?

Various complementary fruits flow from it. The Pope mentions some, such as:

• Feeling loved by him and made capable of loving in union with his human Heart: love for love. The Lord calls us “to build a new civilization of love” (no. 182), since “he enables us to love as he loved and thus he himself loves and serves through us” (no. 203);
• an intense experience of consolation: “It is worthwhile to recover this expression of the spiritual experience developed around the Heart of Christ: the inner desire to offer him consolation… If the Beloved is the most important, how could we not want to console him?” (no. 152). “In this contemplation of the Heart of Christ, who gave himself to the utmost, we are consoled… Desiring to console him, we leave consoled” (no. 161);
• the invitation to unite ourselves and participate in his Paschal Mystery: “As we seek to offer something to Christ for his consolation, our own sufferings are illuminated and transfigured by the paschal light of love” (no. 157);
• the profound meaning of the idea of Christian reparation, which “cannot be understood merely as a set of external works, although these are indispensable and sometimes admirable. It requires a spirituality, a soul, a meaning that gives them strength, impetus, and tireless creativity. It needs the life, fire, and light that come from the heart of Christ” (no. 184);
• the arising of compunction, which “is not a sense of guilt that casts us down, nor a scruple that paralyzes us, but a beneficial goad that burns within and heals…: it is the miracle of sadness, of the good sadness that leads to sweetness” (no.159). And therefore the person who feels compunction “becomes less and less attached to self and more attached to Christ, and becomes poor in spirit […], the person who feels compunction in the heart feels more like a brother to all the sinners in the world” (no. 190);
• the encouragement to purify ourselves from our sins, since “love needs the purification of tears that ultimately leave us thirstier for God and less obsessed with ourselves” (no.158), so that we may experience “the miracle of sadness, of the good sadness that leads to sweetness” (no.159). And therefore “the pain we feel in our hearts gives way to complete trust, and, in the end, what remains is gratitude, tenderness, peace; what remains is his love reigning in our lives” (no. 161);
• the perception of a renewed Christian mission, from person to person, in service of the Gospel: “In the light of the Sacred Heart, mission becomes a matter of love, and the greatest risk in this mission is that many things may be said and done, but the joyful encounter with the love of Christ who embraces and saves may not be brought about” (no. 208). This mission, therefore, “requires missionaries who are in love, who allow themselves to be won over by Christ once again and who cannot help but pass on this love that has changed their lives” (no. 209); and who consequently seek “to communicate Christ's love to others” (no. 216);
• the rediscovery of the indispensable role of the Church: “We must not think of this mission of communicating Christ as if it were merely something between me and him. It is lived in communion with one's community and with the Church” (no. 212). ). It is therefore indispensable for the whole Church to have “a new deepening of the love of Christ represented by the Sacred Heart” (no. 89);
  
• the affirmation of the special place held in the Church by the Virgin Mary, as mother, member, model, and type of the Church. Therefore, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Mary “takes nothing away from the unique adoration due to the Heart of Christ; rather, it encourages it” (no. 176).

How does the Pope conclude this encyclical?

He concludes it with a prayer: “I pray to the Lord Jesus that rivers of living water may flow from his holy Heart for all of us, to heal the wounds we inflict on one another, to strengthen our capacity to love and serve, and to encourage us to learn to walk together toward a just, supportive, and fraternal world. This will continue until we joyfully celebrate together the banquet of the heavenly Kingdom. There the risen Christ will harmonize all our differences with the light that continually flows from his open Heart. May he always be blessed!” (no. 220). As the Jubilee approaches, may Christ's Heart strengthen us all in hope, which “does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5:5).

Let us often read and reread Dilexit nos to enter ever more deeply into the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the safe place where we feel loved and cared for and from which we can always set out again to bring his love into the world!

Did Bishop Martinelli's words help you understand Dilexit nos?
Then share them with the people you love. It will be a much-appreciated gift!