The Sacred Heart and the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus

The Sacred Heart of Jesus is one of the most popular devotions among the Catholic faithful. The number of statues, images, icons, and other representations of the Sacred Heart in Catholic art and architecture, as well as litanies, novenas, and other prayers of popular piety, show how beloved the representation of Our Lord's Heart is to His disciples. The solemn feast of the Sacred Heart always falls within the month of June, which is why Holy Mother Church dedicates this entire month to the Sacred Heart. But one aspect of the Sacred Heart devotion that is little known by most of the faithful is its intimate association with the feast of Corpus Christi and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.

The solemn feast of Corpus Christi always had an Octave before 1955. The Octave would last from the Thursday following Trinity Sunday to the subsequent Thursday. This year, the Octave of Corpus Christi would have been from June 19 to June 26. And on the evening of the 8th Day of the Corpus Christi Octave (June 26 this year), known as the Octave Day, the Church would always sing the First Vespers of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus — which also had its own proper Octave. Thus, the Octave of Corpus Christi would lead directly to the Octave of the Sacred Heart. Corpus Christi is the Church's celebration of the human Body and Blood of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, and the Sacred Heart is the Church’s celebration of His human Heart. The wisdom of the Church's traditional liturgical calendar, therefore, and its downright ingenuity, is that Holy Mother Church shows us clearly, through the immediate succession of one of these feasts into the other, that the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus and His Sacred Heart are one and the same. The feast of Corpus Christi leads directly to the feast of the Sacred Heart in order to show that the Eucharistic Heart of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament is indeed the Sacred Heart of Jesus: the Heart that "so loved the world."

Corpus Christi is the celebration of the mystery of the Blessed Sacrament in its entirety. Thus we have the Body and Blood of Christ (the physical aspects of His human nature), His Soul (the spiritual part of His human nature), and His Divinity (that is, His divine nature as God, the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity). All of these are present in the Blessed Sacrament because the Blessed Sacrament contains the full and complete person of Jesus Christ: Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. And because the identity of Christ is that of Love (Christ is God, and “God is love” -I John 4:8), it follows that the Blessed Sacrament must contain the fullness of Divine Love. This Love of God is revealed fully through the human Heart of Jesus, and consequently, the Blessed Sacrament must be the fullest and most complete manifestation of Christ's Sacred Heart in this world.

When Our Lord appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in Paray-le- Monial, France between 1673 and 1675, He allowed her to rest her head upon His Heart and spoke to her both of His deep love for mankind and of His sorrow in regard to man's indifference and ingratitude towards Him:

Behold this Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to the point of exhausting and consuming itself in order to testify of its love. And yet, in return, I receive from the greater part of men only ingratitude, by their irreverence and sacrilege, and by the coldness and contempt that they have for Me in this Sacrament of Love.

Notice that Jesus calls the Holy Eucharist His “Sacrament of Love.” One can sense, in the above words, the pain felt by the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the profound disappointment that He felt at being rejected or even just treated with indifference by the multitude.

This sorrow is echoed by St. Francis of Assisi when, in contemplating the rejection of Christ during His Passion, the Saint embraced a life-sized crucifix and wept bitterly as he cried out, Alas, Love is not loved! Love is not loved! Our Lord Jesus Christ did everything He possibly could to reveal His great love for the human race, even to the point of giving His own life on the Cross for man's Salvation. And yet, even that did not seem to unfreeze the cold hearts of men, who barely even raised a simple Thank You in gratitude. But what else could Our Lord do? How else could He show men just how much He, as God, loved them? If dying for man's sins were not enough to stir the human heart to love God, then what ever could be?

Fr. Frederick William Faber, the 19th century English hymn-writer and theologian who converted to Catholicism from the Anglican religion and joined the Congregation of Oratorians (the Congregation of St. Philip Neri), taught that humility is the defining characteristic of love. He wrote that the greater an act is in love, the more humble it is. So if Christ's great love for the human race could not be acknowledged by man even in the mystery of the Incarnation (that is, in Christ's self-abasement whereby He lowered Himself from His rightful place at the right hand of His father in glory in order to descend to earth and become man)... if that were not enough for man to acknowledge Christ’s love for him, then God would have to invent an even greater act of humility, of self-lowering, so as to stir the frigid hearts of men to acknowledge His love for them and love Him in return. And that is exactly what He did.

If becoming man, who suffered and died on a Cross, were not a great enough act of humility to get mankind to love Him, then God would descend even further, and would become bread.

The Holy Eucharist, Fr. Faber says, is God's greatest miracle — even greater than the act of the creation of the entire universe, even greater than the Incarnation itself! — because it is God's greatest act of self-abasement (lowering of Himself) and of humility. It is as if Jesus were saying,

Since becoming man, and suffering, and dying on a Cross is not enough to get you to love Me, then I will descend even further, in an act of even greater humility, and will become your daily bread. Will you then offer Me your love?

The Blessed Sacrament is the place where we discover the love of Christ's Most Sacred Heart like in no other place here on earth. The Tabernacle and the Altar are where we must go if we wish to draw from the springs of Eternal Life. As the Office of the Sacred Heart of Jesus so beautifully says:

Hauriétis aquas in gáudio de fóntibus Salvatóris.

Ye shall draw water joyfully from the Springs of the Saviour.

This mystical Water is the Love that flows from the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is to be found primarily in the Blessed Sacrament. Saint Francis of Assisi, reflecting on the rejection of Christ during His bitter Passion as he embraced that life-sized crucifix, lamented the fact that “Love is not loved.” His words could very aptly be applied to the attitude that many Catholics today have towards the Most Blessed Sacrament. Jesus is simply not loved as He ought to be in the very Sacrament of His Love.

In Our Lord’s revelation of His Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary in the 17th century, Jesus went even further and said that those souls who cause Him the greatest pain through their lukewarmness and spiritual indifference towards the Blessed Sacrament are the souls of priests and religious: those souls that are consecrated to Him in a particular way through Holy Orders or the vows of religion (poverty, chastity, and obedience). If those souls are lukewarm and tepid, how can we expect the laity to be fervent? It is a known fact that many more lay people (proportionately) spend time before the Blessed Sacrament than do the clergy — taking into account the percentage of Catholics who are ordained ministers. This is especially true in the case of diocesan priests. Many diocesan priests who promote Adoration, or expose the Blessed Sacrament for Adoration by the faithful, are absent from the church once the Blessed Sacrament is exposed, such that the laity find themselves alone before the Holy Eucharist, without a priest present. Granted, the clergy have many pastoral duties to perform over the course of a day. But this is still a great tragedy. Pastoral duties should, whenever possible, we scheduled outside the hours of Adoration, so that the priest himself can spend time before the Blessed Sacrament (except, of course, in cases of emergencies, such as when a person is dying and needs the Last Rites right away). After all, who is in greater proximity to the Sacred Heart of Jesus present in the Most Blessed Sacrament than a priest who consecrates bread and wine each and every day (and sometimes, more than once a day) into the very Body and Blood of Christ? Priests are called to an especially intimate union with Christ through the act of transubstantiation. And yet, how many priests today truly give the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament the time and honour that He deserves?

Proximity with the Blessed Sacrament, through frequent attendance at Holy Mass and Adoration outside of Mass, is the quickest and surest way to become a saint, because it is in the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus that lies the secret to all holiness. Holiness is the direct fruit of love, and nowhere can we encounter the love of Christ’s Sacred Heart more perfectly and more completely than in His great Sacrament of Love.