In defence of the Sacred Heart

I was never a big fan of the Sacred Heart. In fact, the Sacred Heart used to make me see red: white-bread, saccharine-soaked images of Jesus staring into the blue with puppy-dog eyes; robes and hair flowing in pious cascades; stow-book religious "camp" for the spiritually infantilized.

But, on a high summer Sunday morning in ordinary time, in a little country church located on the banks of the Saugeen River (back in the days of our failed attempt to begin a rural Catholic Worker community, but that's a whole other story), it happened. The Sacred Heart changed my heart.

I was early, for a change. I genuflected, slipped into a back pew, and as my eyes adjusted to the stained-glass light, Mary emerged on sanctuary right, Jesus on sanctuary left, their fiery hearts on larger-than-life display. Mary held her hands gently against her chest with fingers curled into her palms and index finger pointing to her heart. Jesus stood with arms reaching down to his waist, nail-pierced palms turned outwards and heart burning in a crown of thorns.

I was startled by their uncompromising vulnerability. A shiver surged through my body. Jesus and Mary were meeting the world with hearts absolutely and irrevocably wide open, welcoming everything and everyone: anger, fear, violence, hatred; a wild janjaweed raider, an Abu Ghraib interrogator, a Pentagon war-planner, a robber with a gun. Regardless of who you are or what you have done, Jesus and Mary offered unconditional embrace, waiting hands and an open heart.

I tried to imagine myself in their sandals. What would I do if I encountered such a character? Run, clench myself into a fist, reach for a weapon? At the very least, I would fold my arms across my chest and look tough. In Iraq, while facing a man with a gun with my hands tied behind my back ("Give us money," he said. "We know you, have more".), I wasn't so tough. I shook uncontrollably. I was afraid. But not so Sacred Hearts. They are open to anything, ready to go anywhere.

I next met the Sacred Heart in Auschwitz' Block 11, a Gestapo hell-hole where the most exquisite tortures were used to crush those suspected of resisting the Nazi regime. In cell #20 for example, four prisoners would be forced to stand overnight in three-foot square cubicles, work their slave-labour day jobs, and return to their special accommodations for three consecutive days. They were lucky if they got a bowl of nettle soup.

I couldn't believe it. Next door, in cell #21, carved in the wall, the image of a young bearded man with luminous eyes, a halo, robes, heart exposed in the center of his chest: the Sacred Heart of Jesus etched into plaster by a prisoner's fingernails, a member of the Polish underground captured in 1944 named Stephan Jansienski.

And, reaching across Jesus' waist, a partly-finished arm, the flesh at its shoulder seemingly stripped down to bone. I imagined a starving prisoner kneeling in front of Jesus, face pressed tight to his chest and holding on for dear life. Tears filled my eyes. Even here, in this Godforsaken place, and everywhere, in every dungeon of despair, the Sacred Heart beats. There was no suffering in which the Sacred Heart did not dwell. I knelt down too.

I fell in love with the Sacred Heart that day. I see it now as a profound meditation on human freedom, on the disarming power of the disarmed life. When we know who we are, a no-matter-what loved child of God, then we cannot but love in that same no-matter-what way, without condition or limit or fear. When we lay down our weapons (whatever they be--the desire to punish or an inter-continental nuclear missile) and open wide our hearts, we become truly free, a Sacred Heart ready to embrace anyone, do anything, go anywhere.

Perhaps old Leo XIII was on to something after all when he "solemnly consecrated" all humankind to the Sacred Heart on June 11, 1899. He called it "the great act" of his pontificate. Perhaps history would be a little different if we all took the Sacred Heart to heart.

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