Haley Stewart – Word on Fire Blog –
The Sacred Heart is an image of fiery love, of unquenchable mercy. The heart is the center, the essence of a person. To wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve is to be open with the world. But the Sacred Heart of Jesus highlights a much deeper vulnerability—he holds out his heart knowing that it will be trampled by those it burns with love for, first in the Passion and then when we as sinners wound the heart of God through our sins. And this ultimate vulnerability is remarkable because of the power and strength of God. He does not have to love us in this radical way, but he chooses to. And this mystery is displayed in the Incarnation when God the Most High is born as a helpless child and again and again in the Eucharist.
This revolution of tenderness is what motivated saints like St. Maximilian Kolbe to sacrifice his life for another man while imprisoned at Auschwitz—a fate he suffered because of his courageous stand against the evils of Nazism. His heavenly life began after making his earthly life a reflection of the Sacred Heart of Jesus: holding out all that he was and offering it for the sake of his fellow man because of his burning love for God.
One of my college roommates kept an icon of Our Lady of Tender Mercy by her bed. Ever since she introduced me to this image, I have been struck by how it displays Mary’s love for the Christ child in the way our Lady cradles him in her arms and rests her cheek so gently against his. But it is also an image of great strength. As I have learned since my oldest child was born over a decade ago, a mother’s love is very fierce. How many times have I held my babies lovingly to my heart, breathing in their blessed scent, my nose tickled by their baby curls, and been struck by the reality that I would die for them in an instant? I know I would place myself between any danger and my child. I would fight a bear, tackle an assailant, take a bullet for my babies—and I see that same kind of love for Jesus in the eyes of Mary. Her tenderness grows out of the all-consuming love she has for her son. It is not a weakness; it is her strength.
The revolution of tenderness that we see in the eyes of our Lady and St. Maximilian Kolbe and in the Sacred Heart of Jesus is calling us out of our calloused and self-centered lives into a more radical love. Whenever we sacrifice our safety, our comfort, our security, our energy, or our wealth for the sake of the unfathomable mercy and love of God, we join this revolution of tenderness.
Convert, activist, and Servant of God Dorothy Day claimed, “The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?” Can we trade our hearts of stone for Jesus’ Sacred Heart? And can that conversion of heart motivate us to transform our world with sacrifice as Dorothy Day did? As we look around the suffering in our world today due to evils like abortion, racism, injustice, and greed, we may become overwhelmed and paralyzed by the magnitude of what we face and the sin that lurks in our own hearts. But we have only to look into the eyes of our Lady, the lives of the saints, and the vulnerable power of the Sacred Heart to see that we are not alone, and that the heart of Christ is great enough for all of it. We are invited to play our small part in a revolution of tenderness that begins in our lives and ripples out to bring grace and mercy to a suffering world.
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us and on the whole world.