Spring 2025 - St. Bernard's Magazine (1) - Flipbook - Page 15
It is amazing how much of this symbolism is drawn
from Sacred Scripture! In Ezekiel 36:26, God
promises His people: "I will give you a new heart."
For St. Paul, this promise has reached completion in
the gifting of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost: "God’s love
has been poured into our hearts through the Holy
Spirit who has been given to us" (Romans 5:5). These
passages indicate that God desires us to undergo a
transformation in our innermost, a re-creation of our
very selves: and He does this by "placing His spirit
within us" (Ezekiel 36:27), not on the surfaces, not for
the sake of a "whitewashed" exterior (see Mt 23:27),
but in our innermost core.
There is something startling, though, about the
revelation of God in Sacred Scripture. The whole
inspired text, from the Garden of Eden in Genesis to
the New Jerusalem in Revelation, is ultimately a
revelation of God's own heart. Above all else, God
wishes for us not merely to do or think this or that rather, what God wants most is that we know what is
innermost in Him, which is nothing other than love
("God is love" [1 John 4:8]). God's heart of love for
Israel and for all of humanity is precisely an
expression of His innermost self - it is the love of the
Trinity shared with humanity, an 'open heart' for all of
us. It is not simply that He wishes to give us new
hearts: He wants us to have these new, soft hearts that
are not hardened to Him. He wants us to be
transformed so that our hearts may receive His love,
so that they might be able to express love in return.
But this is not the whole story. If God wishes to reveal
His heart, his innermost, how might He do it? We can
think of many possibilities - but the way He ultimately
did it shattered even the most radical expectations. As
Pope Francis wrote, "the eternal Son of God, in His
utter transcendence, chose to love each of us with a
human heart" (60). What an astonishing gift that truly
defies our comprehension: now, "entering into the
heart of Christ, we feel loved by a human heart filled
with affections and emotions like our own.... It is
precisely in His human love, and not apart from it, that
we encounter His divine love" (67). The triune God
knew that this is the best way to reveal Himself to us:
not by a means foreign, but familiar; not through a
hidden language, but an obvious one - the language of
the human heart.
Jesus' Sacred Heart burns with this love, revealing to all
the fiery love of the triune God. But as is clear from the
images of the Sacred Heart, this is not only a heart
inflamed: it is also a heart that is pierced. This wound is a
reminder of how far that divine love was willing to go: as
Pope Pius XII wrote, this wounded heart "remains
through the course of the ages a striking image of that
spontaneous charity by which God gave His only
begotten Son for the redemption of men and by which
Christ expressed such passionate love for us that He
offered Himself as a bleeding victim on Calvary for our
sake" (Haurietis Aquas, 78).
Now we see who God is, for "they shall look on him
whom they have pierced" (John 19:37; Zechariah 12:10):
He is a furnace of love that burns for ultimate
communion with each of us. And it is this heart for
communion that we receive anew through the Holy
Spirit. Our love overflows from this new heart: as Pope
Francis wrote, "in contemplating the pierced heart of the
Lord, who 'took our infirmities and bore our diseases' (Mt
8:17), we too are inspired to be more attentive to the
sufferings and needs of others, and confirmed in our
efforts to share in his work of liberation as instruments
for the spread of his love" (171).
Dr. Matthew Kuhner is Vice President/Academic Dean and
Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at St. Bernard’s.
Dr. Kuhner earned his Masters in Theological Studies at the
Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and
the Family in Washington, DC, and completed his Ph.D. in
systematic theology at Ave Maria University in southwest
Florida.
We invite you to join us in-person and via Zoom as we hold
a one-day conference to celebrate the Solemnity of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus on Friday, June 27th, 2025. This
date marks the close of the Jubilee for the 350th
anniversary of the apparitions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. Speakers will address
Jesus' Sacred Heart in accessible talks meant to inform and
inspire. On Saturday, June 28th, 2025, the feast of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary, we invite you to join us inperson for a half-day retreat centered upon the Sacred
Heart of Jesus, led by Prof. Lisa Lickona.
Scan the QR code to learn more and register:
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