As we approach the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart it is timely that we also commemorate the tenth anniversary of Pope Francis\u2019 Encyclical, Laudato si\u2019 which Daniel O\u2019Leary has referred to as God\u2019s love story (in This Astonishing Secret, The Love Story of Creation and the Wonder of You, Garratt, Melbourne, 2018) which encapsulates \u2018a listening that draws God ever nearer to all people especially the oppressed, the suffering and also a groaning creation.\u2019 When we consider that heart and earth use the same letters, much of this makes sense. God\u2019s love is revealed through a broken heart to reveal the extent of that love in Jesus and to let the world in to make healing and liberation possible. And in October 2024, Pope Francis published Dilexit nos \u2018on the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ.\u2019 As I reflect on these, the word \u2018wound\u2019 keeps appearing more than forty times in Dilexit nos.<\/p>\n
Matthew Fox says that \u2018The Cosmic Christ is present wherever there is pain. The Cosmic Christ unites all this pain in the one divine heart, in the one divine \u2013 but wounded \u2013 body of the Christ which is the body of the universe. The Cosmic Christ is the crucified and suffering one in every creature, just as much as the Cosmic Christ is the radiant one, the divine mirror glistening and glittering in every creature. Divinity is not spared suffering \u2013 that is the lesson of the Cosmic Christ who suffers.\u2019 The heart of Christ is forever being pierced. It is pointing to the pain the lives of people, the wounds in the Earth \u2013 God\u2019s gift of creation \u2013 as well as the dignity of all that God has created. And we cannot be silent in the face of this. As Yolanda Pierce writes (in The Wounds Are the Witness: Black Faith Weaving Memory into Justice and Healing) \u2018to be silent is to risk that stories will be forgotten, root causes of pains will be ignored, and extraordinary moments of healing will go unrecognised as a provision of God\u2019s justice.\u2019<\/p>\n
We must remember this in our ministry as Missionaries of the Sacred Heart because only God\u2019s justice can heal our spirits and renew our hearts. Pierce continues, \u2018our stories are too important to forget \u2026. For wounded people, landscapes, and communities exist not only as a legacy of traumas and harms but as evidence of the undeniable power of memory and the unstoppable quest for justice. When the wounds bear witness, the world can never claim ignorance of another\u2019s pain. When the wounds bear witness, there is awe and wonder at the capacity for laughter and joy even amid sorrow. When the wounds bear witness, they tell the truth about both the extent of the injury and the extraordinary work of healing.\u2019 It is necessary to look, to see, to listen to the reality of a hurting people and the earth. These take us into the heart of reality and put us in touch with the loving kindness of God.<\/p>\n
The spirituality of the heart calls for constant change of heart that amplifies the cry of our siblings, especially those appealing to us to be heard, as well as our common home in which we all share. By listening to these cries, we can awaken the consciences of all to the plight of our siblings. We need to recognise that we are all interconnected, which \u2019cannot be real if our hearts lack tenderness, compassion and concern for our fellow human beings\u2019 (LS, 91). The poet, John Muir says, \u2018When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.\u2019 Pope Francis combined this interconnectedness in both Laudato si\u2019 where \u2018all creation is connected\u2019 and Fratelli Tutti where \u2018everyone is connected.\u2019 This is so poignant today as we observe Palestinian people being erased from their lands, coupled with the violence of silence. It highlights the reality that at the heart of injustice and violence is the one we ignore, neglect, condemn or erase, which is not like us.<\/p>\n
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\nThe Spirituality of the Heart is a call to look at our world through the lens of a heart that is broken and thus always open.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAt the heart of the gospels and our spirituality is the promotion of justice, peace and care for one another, the other, and creation. The call for a contemplative gaze (Laudato si\u2019) means appreciating God\u2019s wonders by sharing God\u2019s passion for the world\u2019s flourishing, beginning with our neighbour and grieving with God to resist whatever degrades people or creation.<\/p>\n
This calls for \u2018a politics of vulnerability\u2019 made possible by recovering kindness, which \u2018frees us from the cruelty that at times infects human relationships …(and) once kindness becomes a culture within society it transforms lifestyles, relationships and the ways ideas are discussed and compared\u2019 (Fratelli tutti 222-224).<\/p>\n
The Spirituality of the Heart is a call to look at our world through the lens of a heart that is broken and thus always open. This is how the heart of God is continually broken open to let the world in \u2013 where the cry of people calls for appreciation, acceptance, equity and justice. It is not enough for us to appreciate Jesus or celebrate the dream of the founders of religious congregations. We must embody their dreams today. Though constantly vulnerable to human rejection, God embodies agonising love and does not let suffering have the last word. The broken and poor Jesus consciously identified with women, children, Samaritans, tax-collectors, outsiders and still does through us. He ascended into heaven bearing scars and wounds, and they are about love and connection.<\/p>\n
Leonard Cohen in an interview said, \u2018If the wound of Jesus comes to express his love for (man)kind, then it will never heal\u2019. It reveals the heart of God – a heart that wants to touch our wounds and those of Mother Earth. Can we live from a heart that serves, shows compassion, seeks justice, welcomes the stranger, protects the vulnerable and God\u2019s creation, which goes beyond minimalist standards of the law? Let us not be afraid, as Joanna Macy says, to allow our hearts to be broken open because it lets the world in, and healing follows.<\/p>\n