From Heart to Heart
Alberto Cozzi - With the Encyclical Dilexit Nos on devotion to the Heart of Jesus (2024), Pope Francis establishes a connection with the first Encyclical, written jointly with Benedict XVI, entitled Lumen fidei (2013). There, the importance of the heart in the experience of faith was clearly affirmed, in harmony with St. Paul’s declaration, “One believes with the heart” (Romans 10:10). Pope Francis commented: “In the Bible, the heart is the center of a person, where all their dimensions intertwine: body and spirit; the interiority of the person and their openness to the world and others; intellect, will, and affectivity. Indeed, the heart can hold these dimensions together because it is the place where we open ourselves to truth and love, allowing them to touch and transform us deeply. Faith transforms the whole person precisely to the extent that they open themselves to love. In this interweaving of faith and love, one understands the form of knowledge proper to faith” (Lumen fidei, 26).
Believing requires the heart, precisely because the heart is the seat of that original unity which is the person, and also of that vulnerability which allows us to experience the transforming power of God’s love. “Heart” is one of those words in which we are grasped by what God desires to give us, a word in which the divine motion that sustains our actions draws us into the abundance of grace and God’s ever-greater love. Love finds in faith the strength to face the test of time and to unify in the heart all the dimensions of existence that would otherwise be dispersed. It is tempting to favor the values of the brain over those of the heart: “Let us never forget that only the heart can unite and integrate; the heart brings together idea and reality, time and space, life and death, and eternity” (J. Bergoglio, Aprite la mente al vostro cuore, Rizzoli, Milan, 2013, p. 33). Faith and reason must be combined in the heart, avoiding rationalist or intellectualist temptations.
Here we find one of the great challenges that devotion to the Sacred Heart addressed at the dawn of the rationalist era (1600). This era eventually led to the Enlightenment’s claim (1700) to reconstruct human unity solely through reason, thereby overcoming confessional divisions and partial, sectarian community affiliations. It is certainly not a question of opposing reason to the heart, but rather of recovering the wholeness of human experience. This wholeness is preserved in the heart, that is, in that unifying aspect of the human person where the self in relation to reality is engaged, and where the essence of humanity is realized. It is therefore necessary to avoid letting knowledge precede love, or allowing knowledge to render affection superfluous, and to prevent rationality from claiming to dissolve any sense of community, perhaps in the name of forms of absolute autonomy that seek emancipation from everything and everyone.
“In order to be able to know, one needs a position of openness, that is, of ‘love.’ Without love, one does not know. After all, this love is indicated by that original instinct whereby nature—that is, God who creates us—throws us into the universal comparison with curiosity… Ultimately, only that lively openness to the object that becomes affection allows it to touch us for what it is… As man walks with all of himself, so he sees with all of himself: he sees with the eyes of reason insofar as the heart is open to, insofar as affection supports the opening of the eyes; otherwise, the eye closes before the object” (L. Giussani, S. Alberto, J. Prades, Generare tracce nella storia del mondo, Rizzoli, Milan, 1998, pp. 30–31). It is precisely the light of faith, held in the person’s heart, that enables them to read reality and provide answers to the questions arising from contemporary history.
The primary place for this confrontation between faith and the Church’s historical journey is not in cultural dynamics, nor in clashes over different visions of reality or humanity, nor in ideological confrontations, nor in the reorganization of power and bureaucratic roles in society or the Church, nor even in grand pastoral programs. The real challenge is played out in the heart. It is the believer who, from the center of their spiritual experience in the Church, discerns their relationship with reality in order to respond to the challenges of the time. At the basis of this challenge is the certainty that the light of love that is God “touches” the heart of each person: “To touch with the heart: this is to believe” (an expression of St. Augustine, quoted in Lumen fidei, 31).
Francis reminds us of one of those “primordial” or “original” words that we always need, words that express reality by unifying, concentrating, and bringing us to the inner self, thereby personalizing our experience. The Heart remains a powerful symbol that expresses the human being in their synthetic unity, harmonizing the dimensions of experience and the proper stance toward reality. It is a word that unifies, evokes, and immediately recalls the reality that emanates from the core of our experience, keeping us open to the entirety of existence and thus making us aware of the gift offered to us. Such primordial words are among those through which humans, in knowing themselves, express the mystery of their existence without fully resolving it. In the heart, spirit and flesh, thought and its symbol, concept and word, thing and image coexist in a unitary and original whole, without being conflated or identified with one another. Therefore, the word “heart” is irreplaceable.
The emphasis on the heart’s centrality corresponds to the core mystery of our faith, the Incarnation: God communicated himself to the world through the Incarnate Word, who remains Christ forever, fully human. To be Christian, one must continually turn, through the movement of the Spirit, to the humanity of Christ and to his unifying center, which we call the “Heart.” This is precisely the function of the sacraments: they insert us into the humanity of Christ, so that our heart beats to the rhythm of Jesus’ heart (Phil 2:5), making present in our own lives the Father’s desire, the same desire that guided Jesus’ life to the cross and resurrection. “But what is communicated in the Church, what is transmitted in her living Tradition, is the new light which is born of an encounter with the living God, a light which touches the person in his or her innermost being, in his or her heart, involving the mind, will, and affectivity, opening us to a living relationship in communion with God and with others” (Lumen fidei, 40).
Dilexit nos is an Encyclical that should be meditated upon calmly and savored deeply to assimilate its rich spiritual content fully. The following reflections explore and emphasize some of the Encyclical's most beautiful and essential spiritual insights, helping us to appropriate its message by following the structure of its various parts. Moreover, these reflections demonstrate how this primordial word resonates across diverse experiences and sensitivities, awakening aspects of the universal human experience and revealing how Christ’s gift corresponds to the deepest needs of every human heart.
Translation not revised by the author.
