Chapter Talk
THE SACRED HEART
Cor Jesu, desiderium collium æternorum. Heart of Jesus, desire of the eternal hills: a poetic and mysterious phrase taken from Genesis 49:26 to designate the Messiah longed for by the unchanging hills of Palestine, by the inhabitants of the promised Land and by all generations to come. The desire echoes through the centuries, taking on a different accent after the Incarnation, yet essentially one and the same. It is a desire as old as the hills. St. Bernard laments the lukewarmness of his contemporaries’ desire, compared to that of the patriarchs, in his second sermon on the Song of Songs: “During my frequent ponderings on the burning desire with which the patriarchs longed for the incarnation of Christ, I am stung with sorrow and shame… I pray that the intense longing of these men of old, their heartfelt expectation, may be enkindled in me by these words: Let Him kiss me with the kiss of His mouth. The kiss is the symbol, for Bernard, of the mystery of the Incarnation, the conjoining of the human and divine natures and the reconciling to God of all things whether in heaven or on earth. “This kiss”, he concludes, “is no other than the Mediator between God and man, Himself a man, Christ Jesus”. All those who, throughout the ages, have longed for this ‘kiss’ have longed for the divine and human love of Christ, which the Church has resumed in the symbol of the Sacred Heart.
We are not told whether it is possible to follow the Son into this chaos or as Balthasar movingly puts it in his Mysterium Paschale: “whether all that remains is the anguished following gaze of Mary as her Son disappears into the inaccessible darkness where no one can reach him. The apostles wait in the emptiness. Or at least in the non-comprehension that there is a Resurrection and what it can be. The Magdalen can only seek the One she loves at the hollow tomb, weeping from vacant eyes, groping after him with empty hands.” This subjective experience of emptiness is ascribed to Christ himself in his total solidarity with mankind, his desire to experience all that man may experience, his mission to substitute himself for man in order to transform man’s pain and solitude, his poverty and powerlessness in death. Balthasar quotes another text which makes Christ say: “I looked into the abyss and cried, Father, where are you? But I heard only the everlasting, ungovernable storm… And when I looked from the immeasurable world to the eye of God, it was an empty socket… that stared back at men.” Total bleakness then that the Son of Man desired to know propter nos, for us.
We have this passive endurance of emptiness on Holy Saturday. And then Christ rises from the tomb. The emptiness, as we saw, itself becomes a sign of hope. “He is not here – he has risen, as he said.” Resurrexit, sicut dixit. Balthasar has another fine passage on the empty tomb. “What does become visible is, first of all, the empty tomb, filled as it is with heavenly radiance. John strongly emphasises the simultaneity of the emptiness, the absence and the heavenly light (‘two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet’): from out of the emptiness of the death of God streams forth glory and sounds the Resurrection word.”
Jacob, the more human and cunning figure, reveals to us another face of friendship with God. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. Although Jacob’s thigh is put out of joint in the struggle, he refuses to give in: I will not let you go unless you bless me. His obstinate love, his persistence in seeking after divine friendship in the darkness and the half light, obtains for him the blessing and the change of name that heralds a whole destiny.
He knows that God is stronger than he; the pain in his joint reminds him forcibly; but he continues to do violence to God and to cling to Him in the expectation of a blessing, in whatever form it takes. He cannot wrest it from God but he goes on imploring it until the break of day. It is another form of trust and belief in God’s friendship, in and through struggle. This is the real prevailing over God. God is not displeased; He rewards his tenacity.
The pattern of God’s friendship with man continues in the story of Moses, vulnerable and hesitant, hot-tempered, meek and obedient, therefore ultimately strong and capable of friendship with God, of standing in His Presence and speaking with Him, as a man speaks with his friend. Von Balthasar remarks that Moses so pours himself into the Covenant that he embodies it with God vis à vis the people and with the people vis à vis God. “God can lay the weight of the sinful people upon him” because of his obedience. This can only be the obedience of a friend, for otherwise it would crush him. Balthasar continues: “How divine are the functions and qualities that God lays upon the shoulder of the man who embodies the Covenant in his mediation. This is the reason why the only ones who stand in this place are those who are absolutely obedient to God.” There is a cost in friendship, gladly borne, since the wills of the partners are united. There is also the supreme prize – enjoyment of the other’s Presence and look of love. Exodus announces three times that the face of Moses shone after he had spoken with God. The meekest man who lived on the face of the earth, who stammered and flared up and did not think he was any good at speaking, is nonetheless admitted into the Presence of God, into the life of the Heart of God, so thoroughly that the people could hardly look upon the radiance of his face. It reflected God’s own glory; friends begin to resemble one another; even such disparate friends.
Mgr. Le Gall in his book ‘The first friends of God’ describes glory as the ‘trinitarian fullness of the divine life;’ it is the ‘life of friendship of the three divine Persons.’ By this understanding, it is the reciprocal look of love between the Father and the Son, in the light of the Holy Spirit. “The key to being is the mystery of friendship as it is lived in the Trinity.” One might add: the mystery of friendship of the Incarnate Son with the Father, or the look of love bestowed eternally by the Father on the Only Begotten Son rests likewise on the human face of Christ. He, in turn, looks with hope of friendship upon His disciples. You are my friends if you do what I command you. The Gospels show us that He did experience the love of friendship while on earth. We see Him at repose at the home of Martha and Mary, deeply moved at the death of Lazarus. The Beloved Disciple claims friendship for himself, with the assurance of one who knows himself loved. Thirdly, surely Jesus achieved what He desired so much from His disciples. He avows friendship for them, constantly hoisting them up to His own level, even as they tend to slip away from it. This human love of the heart must be akin to the love of friendship in the Trinity: the mutual delight in the other’s presence, the exchange of looks, the admiration and the deep understanding of purpose. If we approach Christ’s Heart, in obedience, perhaps sometimes with holy violence, but always with trust, we are taken into the friendship with the Father, in the Holy Spirit. “Called to become sons in the Son, we shall find our rest in the glory which is full openness to the Father’s love.” The invitation remains. His desire for our friendship is still active, waiting for but never forcing our response, with all the humility of God.
Our desire for Him, in constant need of purification so that it becomes a wholly obedient love; His desire for us, expressed in the love of friendship, once we are enabled to reciprocate by a loving obedience: these two desires meet in the Mass and Holy Communion. They said to Him, Lord give us this bread always (Jn 6:34). I have earnestly desired to eat this pasch with you before I suffer (Lk 22:15). The meeting of desires, the function of friendship, requires encounter and mutual presence. While Christ’s presence in Mass and Communion is sacramental it is not a remote presence. When we come into contact with the Holy Eucharist we come into person-to-person contact with Christ. (O’Connor, Hidden Manna) In this encounter, as in any encounter of friendship, the experience of another’s loving actions encourages a dialectic of love and an intimacy of knowledge between the persons. In this instance, the loving action of Christ is the self-donation of the whole substance of His being as our food and drink. Here the analogy of human friendship ceases to work adequately. Since one of the partners in the eucharistic encounter is divine as well as human, our own loving action consists in submitting and responding to the transforming friendship of Christ. We can know Him and love Him only in being known and loved by Him, by letting His look fall upon us. As with the transubstantiation of the bread and wine, mutatis mutandis, God grasps created existences and transforms them (cf. O’Connor, Hidden Manna). “He, not coming down, lifts the creaturely realities to himself, drawing them up to where He is with the Father.” In the language of the liturgy: ideo exaltatus a terra attraxit nos ad cor suum miserans. (Ant. 3 Lauds). Or in the Preface: omnes ad Cor apertum Salvatoris attracti iugiter haurirent e fontibus salutis in gaudio, all drawn to the Saviour’s open heart, draw ceaselessly and in joy from the springs of salvation. His heart is ever seeking to draw our friendship to itself and it does this most effectively in the Holy Eucharist. Tolkien wrote that what kept him on track in his life was ‘the never ceasing silent appeal of tabernacle and the sense of starving hunger.’
Dom Guéranger, too, understood the profound connection between Eucharist and Sacred Heart in the light on the Incarnation. In his first Constitutions for S. Pierre, he wrote: “Adoring the mystery of the Incarnate Word and all its immense consequences, this Congregation confesses this mystery present in the Eucharist and rejoices to see it manifested under the symbol of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.” The desire of the everlasting hills, that is, our desire, has been fulfilled by the Sacred Heart of Jesus, really present in the Eucharistic sacrifice. His desire for us, to be with us, not only as Saviour but as friend and brother, has likewise been translated into the Sacrament of the altar, whereby He can be with us and in us forever. In the Holy Eucharist He has found a means of satisfying His love of predilection and thus of assuaging the wound of His Sacred Heart.
