Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Eucharist

Vision of Margaret Mary Alacoque,
Painted by Armand Cambon (1819-1885)

Today is the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  This major feast day was incorporated into the universal liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church in 1856, almost two centuries after the private revelations to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. In those revelations, she reported that Jesus asked for a feast in honour of his Sacred Heart to be celebrated on the Friday after the great celebration of Corpus Christi. And so it is.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart spread throughout the world. It draws our attention to the human Heart of Jesus as the symbol of his total self-giving love. Typically, images of this devotion depict his Heart aflame with love for humanity - wounded and vulnerable, revealing the cost of our redemption.

This devotion reminds the faithful that the mercy of Jesus is boundless and that we may approach him with trust and openness.

In the Eucharist we receive the living Body and Blood of Jesus. In the Mass we encounter the living Christ, whose Heart was pierced for us and whose Blood is poured out for us. The Mass makes present for us the sacrifice of Calvary, where water and blood flowed from the side of Jesus (John 19:34).

The way to the Father is through Christ—whose love is revealed in his Sacred Heart—with whom we are united in the mystery of Calvary, renewed and made present to us again in the Mass. How fitting, then, is today’s Gospel reading from Saint Matthew (11:28–30):

The following are some relevant extracts or quotations from online resources in which the Eucharist and the Sacred Heart are linked.

Fr Joel Thompson SJ has written: ‘The Eucharist is the Heart of Jesus still giving himself to the world’.  

Saint John Paul II wrote, in 1999:

The entire devotion to the Heart of Jesus in its every manifestation is profoundly Eucharistic: it is expressed in religious practices which stir the faithful to live in harmony with Christ, "meek and humble of heart" (Mt 11:29), and it is intensified in adoration. It is rooted and finds its summit in participation in Holy Mass, especially Sunday Mass, where the hearts of the faithful, fraternally assembled in joy, listen to the word of God and learn to offer with Christ themselves and the whole of their lives (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 48). There they are nourished at the paschal banquet of the Redeemer's Body and Blood and, sharing fully the love which beats in his Heart, they strive to be ever more effective evangelizers and witnesses of solidarity and hope.

The late Pope Francis wrote at some length on this devotion and published an important Encyclical just a few months before his death last year.  In Dilexit Nos he wrote the following (#84):

The promotion of Eucharistic communion on the first Friday of each month, for example, sent a powerful message at a time when many people had stopped receiving communion because they were no longer confident of God’s mercy and forgiveness and regarded communion as a kind of reward for the perfect. In the context of Jansenism, the spread of this practice proved immensely beneficial, since it led to a clearer realization that in the Eucharist the merciful and ever-present love of the heart of Christ invites us to union with him. It can also be said that this practice can prove similarly beneficial in our own time, for a different reason. Amid the frenetic pace of today’s world and our obsession with free time, consumption and diversion, cell phones and social media, we forget to nourish our lives with the strength of the Eucharist.