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But the other two gifts reflect a similar spirit of self-sacrificing giving. In fact, each of those three gifts is a different way in which we receive the greatest gift of all: Christ Himself.Īs Catholics, we understand how the Eucharist constitutes Christ’s literal gift of Himself to us. Pius XII specifically associates the divine heart what he describes as three of Christ’s greatest gifts: the Eucharist, His Mother, and the priesthood. In Luke 23, Jesus cries out in a ‘loud voice’: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. Then, at the climax of His ministry, as His Sacred Heart was beating its last on the Cross, Jesus yields the Spirit back. And behold a voice from heaven, saying: ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ First, in Matthew 3, after Jesus is baptized, we witness an extraordinary exchange of trinitarian love:Īnd Jesus being baptized, forthwith came out of the water: and lo, the heavens were opened to him: and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him. The beginning and the climax of Jesus’ public life contain two profound moments of trinitarian love. Such dedication is also on display earlier in His life, when Jesus, unbeknownst to Mary and Jesus, stays behind in the temple, conversing with the teachers. The Gospel of John speaks directly to the passion Jesus had for the temple of His Father when we are told that the disciples recalled this Old Testament verse: The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up. “His Heart beat with love for His Father and with a holy anger when seeing the sacrilegious buying and selling taking place in the Temple,” Pius XII writes. One is the cleansing of the money-changers from the temple. But Christ’s love for the Father is particularly apparent in several distinct moments. Jesus’ entire ministry can be seen as an expression of the trinitarian love, because it is carried out in obedience to God the Father. (Of course, Christ’s human and divine hearts, like His human and divine natures, must always be understood as united to each other.)
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“And finally-and this in a more natural and direct way-it is the symbol also of sensible love, since the body of Jesus Christ, formed by the Holy Spirit, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, possesses full powers of feelings and perception, in fact, more so than any other human body,” Pius XII writes. Because Christ was wholly divine and wholly man, His heart was not only divine, but also human. This love, in turn, has two aspects to it.
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But then, there is also the love that Christ, God made man, has for us. There is, first of all, the trinitarian love among Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. As we do so, it becomes apparent that the Sacred Heart speaks to the ‘threefold’ love of Christ, as Pius XII puts it. It’s the “mystical ladder” which we climb to “embrace God Our Savior.” It’s also a “most precious shrine” which contains the “unlimited treasures of His merits.” The encyclical itself takes its name for yet another metaphor for Christ’s heart in Isaiah 12:3: “You shall draw waters with joy out of the savior’s foundations.”Īll three are images that invite us to draw near and contemplate the Sacred Heart. In his encyclical, Haurietis Aquas, issued in 1956 on the centenary of the Feast of the Sacred Heart, Pius XII offers us several metaphors for the Sacred Heart of Jesus.