The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
by Deacon Tracy Jamison, OCDS, PhD
Today is the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The pierced Heart of Jesus reveals his love for us, and no one has greater love for us than Jesus does. In his divine Person is a perfect unity of divine Love and human love. He loves us with the divine Love that burns forever in the Heart of the Most Holy Trinity. He also loves us with the human love that he possesses as the Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary. His finite human Heart is completely filled with his infinite divine Love. The infinite divine Love that burns in the Heart of Jesus is productive of all the goodness that we possess, and the perfect human love that burns in the Heart of Jesus is receptive to all the goodness that we possess. In the Heart of Jesus we find nothing less than the source and eminence of Goodness Itself and Love Itself. His Love is both necessary and sufficient for true and everlasting human happiness.
In 1674 in France, the Heart of Jesus was revealed to St Margaret Mary Alacoque, a humble Catholic nun of the Visitation Order. Jesus told St Margaret Mary that he was manifesting his Heart in order to reveal the source of all true love and to call everyone to turn away from the path of damnation. That revelation is the reason why many Catholics strive to keep a Holy Hour on Thursdays and to receive Holy Communion on the First Friday of each month. It is also the reason why the whole Church celebrates this Solemnity today. The readings at Mass today speak of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, seeking and saving those who are lost. The Heart of Jesus is calling us all to repentance and to our true home, the joy and happiness of heaven.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus is burning with infinite Love for us, but devotion to his Heart is also a devotion to his perfect human love, his emotional subjectivity, and his real relationality to us. God, who by his divine Essence is invisible, immovable, and impassible, has become visible, movable, and passible in the man Jesus Christ, who loves us with a human love as well as a divine love. The Heart of Jesus is thus wounded by rejection and indifference. In Jesus, God can truly relate to us. Through the Incarnation, God puts himself in real relation to us. He makes himself vulnerable to us and needs us in his humanity. He can die a human death. The flesh and blood of Christ can be separated from his human soul. The visible wound that pierces his physical heart and through which his blood pours reveals his sacrificial love and his emotional woundedness.
The Heart of Jesus is consoled by our devotion and contemplation. Christ has a human soul and a human self. The human self, in the sense being used here, is distinct from the person and the soul and is the inner world of conscious thoughts and desires. There is something that it is like to be Jesus. He has a human personality and experience. The greater capacity for love, the greater capacity for wounding. No human heart was ever more sorrowful than that Heart of Christ. The piercing of his heart is a revelation of his human subjectivity and true motivations. He really was full of love for us. He is meek and humble of heart, as he said, and he is literally wounded of heart. It is an analogy, not merely a metaphor. His physical heart is literally wounded, and so is his emotional heart. He suffers mental and emotional anguish. He truly has a broken heart.
It is not easy to judge another person’s motives. Motives must be revealed in actions. Jesus was continually misjudged among men. What was it like to be Jesus? He suffered constant mental and emotional anguish, which is the greatest possible human suffering. No human heart was ever more sensitive than the Heart of Jesus was. No human heart was ever more loving. For God so loved the world, he became man and loved us with a human love so that we might love him with a divine love. God’s Love is sacrificial, and Jesus wants to purify our love. We must sacrifice our hearts for others, as Christ did for us. We must love one another, as Christ has loved us. Jesus loves us, and we can believe it and trust in his love. Jesus will not condemn those who believe in him. God makes himself vulnerable in Jesus. The Heart of Jesus is full of charity, both created charity and uncreated Charity, namely, the Holy Spirit.
Christ heals the brokenhearted. The divinity of Christ is the source of all goodness, and the humanity of Christ is the source of all grace. He binds up our wounds and gives us salvation and protection. How precious is his love and his providence! We are made other christs through the Sacrament of Baptism. We must believe in God and trust in his love for us. He will not condemn us. Even if we sin mortally, he still loves us. God loves all people, even the people in hell. God loves even Lucifer. Nothing can separate us from the Love of God, except ourselves. Separation from God is brought about by mortal sin, which requires grave matter, full knowledge, and full consent. The Sacraments of the Church are offered for our salvation. The Heart of Jesus is the source of the Sacraments. As blood and water constantly flowed from the ancient Jewish temple in Jerusalem through the brook Kidron, so too do blood and water flow constantly from the side of Christ. Jesus is the divine Messiah, the new Adam, and the new Temple.
We should learn by experience how much Christ loves us, and then we should remember it. We can taste and see that the Lord is good. The fountain from the pierced Messiah cleanses the people of God from their sins. It is an atonement. Give him your time, talent, and treasure, and especially your loving attention. Happiness is the contemplation of God in Jesus Christ. We make reparation for the offenses against his love. On Judgment Day, Christ will ask us what we sacrificed for him and for his Church. This is the Christian duty of charity that he placed on his disciples: “Love one another.” Christ offered his heart for us, as did his mother Mary. His sacrifice makes the sacrifices of his disciples efficacious.
Christ wants to possess our hearts completely. Consider the lyrics to the popular song “I Will Possess Your Heart” by Death Cab for Cutie. It’s a beautiful and haunting song. Here is a religious interpretation. Benjamin Gibbard said that “it is basically about a stalker. It’s about this nice guy who wants this girl he can’t have, and he believes they’ll be together once she realizes how great he is--he just has to wait it out. That’s the part that makes the song really creepy, the delusion of thinking that they were meant to be together. It’s a really dark song.” It is a dark and creepy song, and yet the lyrics are open to a mystical interpretation. To some people the lyrics sound as if they are being sung by Christ, who is no delusion and is the true divine Spouse of the human heart. He eternally desires to possess it.
In the music video produced by the band for the song, an abstracted young woman travels to many different countries, as if looking for a religious solution. Perhaps the lyrics and the video are Christ-haunted. Perhaps Christ is following the young women and speaking to her heart. The lyrics and the video remind us of the poem by Francis Thompson, the English Catholic writer, mystic, and opium addict. His poem “The Hound of Heaven” describes Christ as the relentless divine stalker of the human heart, like a hound following a hare. As the Jesuit J. F. X. O’Conor puts it, “As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and imperturbed pace, so does God follow the fleeing soul by his divine grace. And though in sin or in human love, away from God it seeks to hide itself, divine grace follows after, unwearyingly follows ever after, till the soul feels its pressure forcing it to turn to him alone in that never-ending pursuit.”
Christ in his great Mercy wants to give us nothing less than his Heart, but to accept it requires true repentance, true contrition, and a firm purpose of amendment. In the Sacrament of Reconciliation we find the fullness of Christ’s Mercy. And in the Sacrament of the Eucharist we find the fullness of Christ’s Love. The Heart of Jesus forces us to decide what we really want. If all we want is to be affirmed in our errors and in our vices, then we will reject his Love because it is too severe and too demanding. But if we allow him to pick us up, to set us on his shoulders, and to bring us back home, then we will discover the joy of his infinite Love, the perfect Love that loves us more than we love ourselves, the divine Love that is source of all goodness and every virtue. Christ has provided everything that we need for true and everlasting happiness. And so as we enter into the Mystery of Holy Communion, let us pray: O Jesus, Meek and Humble of Heart, make our hearts like unto thine. Amen.
About Deacon Tracy Jamison, OCDS, PhD
Deacon Tracy Jamison was raised in a Christian family as the son of a Scotch-Irish evangelical minister in the Campbellite tradition. As an undergraduate he majored in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Cincinnati Christian University, where his parents had been educated. At this institution he met Joyce, who was completing a degree in Church Music, and after graduation they entered the covenant of Christian marriage in 1988. Through the study of philosophy and the writings of the Early Church Fathers, Tracy was received into the full communion of the Catholic Church in 1992. Under the influence of the theological writings of St. John Paul II he began to study the works of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross and entered formation as a Secular Carmelite of the Teresian Reform. In 1999 he completed the doctoral program in Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, and in 2002 he made his definitive profession as a Secular Carmelite. In 2010 he was ordained as a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Currently he is an associate professor of philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary of the West.
© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.