Introduction
The topic that I have been asked to speak on is
indeed a very broad one: the "Alliance of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary." I
have decided to specify it further in terms of a theme which I have been mulling
over for a long time, one that is intimately related to the Hearts of Jesus and
Mary and their union, and which I believe deserves serious theological
attention: that of reparation. Indeed, virtually every Pope since Pius XI has
emphasized that our primary response to the love of the Heart of Jesus is the
twofold work of consecration and reparation.
In his great encyclical devoted to this theme, Miserentissimus Redemptor, Pope Pius XI called the Church to embrace the practice of reparation. Here is the way he put it:
Whereas the primary object of consecration is that the creature should repay the love of the Creator by loving him in return, yet from this another naturally follows -- that is, to make amends for the insults offered to the Divine Love by oblivion and neglect, and by the sins and offences of mankind. This duty is commonly called by the name of "reparation."[1]
It seems to me that, in the specific context of the "Alliance of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary," reparation may be thought of in two inter-related but distinguishable ways which can help us to better understand what this alliance means and how we can enter into it more deeply.
Heart of Jesus -- Propitiation for Our Sins
The first way in which reparation is understood theologically is as the atonement, expiation, propitiation or satisfaction which Christ has made for us to the Father in his redemptive sacrifice. Each of these words emphasizes with a slightly different accent the profound truth that once man fell into sin he was incapable of "making up" for the offense which he had caused to God and the disorder which he had introduced into the universe.[2] Only Jesus could repair the damage done by sin and make the reparation owed to God in justice. The new Catechism of the Catholic Church neatly synthesizes this concept thus:
It is the love "even to the end" (Jn. 13:1) which confers the value of redemption, reparation, expiation and satisfaction on the sacrifice of Christ. He knew and loved us all in the offering of his life. "The love of Christ impels us who have reached the conviction that since one died for all, all died" (2 Cor. 5:14). No man, even if he were the most holy, was in a position to take upon himself the sins of all men and to offer himself in sacrifice for all. The existence in Christ of the divine Person of the Son, which surpasses and at the same time embraces all human persons and makes him the Head of all humanity, makes possible his redemptive sacrifice for all.[3]
The fundamental reparation, then, is the reparation made to the Father by Christ on the Cross and renewed on our altars. This is a truth of faith which we all accept, but it is also a mystery so rich, so deep, that we will never exhaust it.
What is of particular interest to us is that this perfect act of reparation made by Christ for us is magnificently symbolized in his Heart. In fact, as you know, one of the invocations of the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is precisely "Heart of Jesus, propitiation for our sins, have mercy on us!" In commenting on this invocation in his Angelus address of 17 August 1986, Pope John Paul II underscored the appropriateness of the identification of Jesus' propitiatory sacrifice with his Heart:
The Passion and Death of Christ involved his whole body. They were effected through all the wounds which he received during the Passion. However they were above all accomplished in his Heart, because it agonized in the dying of his entire body. His Heart was consumed in the throbbing pain of all his wounds. In this despoliation the Heart burned with love; a living fire of love consumed the Heart of Jesus on the Cross.
This love of the Heart was the propitiating power for sins. It overcame ‑‑ and overcomes for all time ‑‑ all the evil contained in sin, all estrangement from God, all rebellion of the human free will, all improper use of created freedom which opposes God and his holiness.[4]
Even in his risen glory Jesus' Heart continues to be the propitiation for our sins as the Pope explained in an Angelus address of 10 September 1989:
Jesus is the willing victim because he offered himself "freely to his passion" (Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer II), the victim of expiation for the sins of mankind (cf. Lev. 1:5; Heb. 10:5-10), which he purged in the fire of his love.
Jesus is the eternal victim. Risen from the dead and glorified at the right hand of the Father, he preserves in his immortal body the marks of the wounds of his nailed hands and feet, of his pierced heart (cf. Jn. 20:27; Lk. 24:39-40) and presents them to the Father in his incessant prayer of intercession on our behalf (cf. Heb. 7:25; Rom. 8:34).[5]
The Heart of Jesus, then, is truly the Heart in which the Father is well pleased, the Heart which has taken the sins of the world upon itself and repaired the breach which man had created between himself and God.
It is Jesus' reparative self-offering which provides the context of the prayer taught by the Angel to the children of Fatima:
O Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference by which He is offended ...[6]
It is likewise the point of reference of the prayer in the Chaplet of Mercy of Blessed Faustina Kowalska:
Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.[7]
Long before the prayer recorded by Sister Lúcia was made public and before Blessed Faustina received hers, Pope Pius XI promulgated an Act of Reparation whose recitation he mandated for the Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus every year.[8] In it the Church prays:
We now offer, in reparation for these violations of your divine honor, the satisfaction you once made to your eternal Father on the cross and which you continue to renew daily on our altars.[9]
In the remarkable designs of God's Providence another young religious, Mother Mary St. Cecilia of Rome, now more commonly known by her Baptismal name as Blessed Dina Bélanger, recorded these words which she heard the Lord speak to her in her sick room in the infirmary of a motherhouse in Québec just a few months after the promulgation of Miserentissimus Redemptor of which she knew nothing:
Offer Me to My Father; offer the love and patience of My Eucharistic Heart. By the offering of My Heart, you can atone infinitely for all the outrages which My Father and I receive; you atone for the lack of love in consecrated souls.[10]
III. Heart of Jesus -- Bruised for Our Offenses
The second way in which reparation is understood theologically -- and this is probably what most of us spontaneously think of when we hear the word -- is as the "consolation" which we offer to the Heart of Christ for what our sins have caused him to suffer for us. It is this particular connotation of reparation, based especially on the revelations of the Lord to St. Margaret Mary, with which Pius XI's Encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor deals.
The first and obvious question that comes to mind is this: "Since Jesus is now in glory at the right hand of the Father, how can we offer him 'consolation'?" Pius XI first cited a very apposite quotation from St. Augustine: "Give me one who loves, and he will understand what I say,"[11] and then gave the following reply:
If, in view of our future sins, foreseen by him, the soul of Jesus became sad unto death, there can be no doubt that by his prevision at the same time of our acts of reparation, he was in some way comforted when "there appeared to him an angel from Heaven" (Lk. 22:43) to console that Heart of his bowed down with sorrow and anguish.[12]
In other words, as Jesus saw the sins of the world in his agony in Gethsemane by virtue of the beatific vision,[13] so He also saw in advance every act of consolation offered to him until the end of time. The Pope also provided a second answer to the question in terms of the suffering of Christ in the members of his body:
To this it may be added that the expiatory passion of Christ is renewed and in a manner continued and fulfilled in His mystical body, which is the Church. For, to use once more the words of St. Augustine, "Christ suffered whatever it behoved Him to suffer; now nothing is wanting of the measure of the sufferings. Therefore the sufferings were fulfilled, but in the head; there were yet remaining the sufferings of Christ in His Body (In Psalm 86). This, indeed, Our Lord Jesus Himself vouchsafed to explain when, speaking to Saul ... he said "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest" (Acts 9:5), clearly signifying that when persecutions are stirred up against the Church, the Divine Head of the Church is Himself attacked and troubled. Rightly, therefore, does Christ, still suffering in His mystical body, desire to have us partakes of His expiation.[14]
Indeed, it was in the light of this second explanation that Pope John Paul quoted Pascal at the beginning of this year at a prayer vigil for peace in Bosnia-Hercegovina held in Assisi saying that Christ "is in agony even to the end of the world".[15]
After this brief analysis, we can say that these two ways of understanding reparation, i.e., (1) as represented by the Heart of Jesus, "propitiation for our sins," and (2) as represented by the consolation offered to the Heart of Jesus, "bruised for our offenses," are two sides of the same coin. It is true that the second meaning has become much more prominent in the devotional literature of modern times, especially since the events at Paray-le-Monial.[16] The one form is not opposed to the other, however, but rather they are mutually complementary. Here is how they are related by a contemporary German theologian in a carefully developed study on this matter:
The basic form of atonement would be to be a son to the Father -- in Christ, the great Atoner, pierced on account of our sins, and through the Spirit -- in this world, marred by sin. And such a form of atonement exactly corresponds to the spirit of the devotion to the Heart of Jesus.
A basic understanding of this kind straightaway shows us that the concrete practice of atonement requires an objective multiplicity of dimensions.
It also shows that it is impossible to ask to whom atonement is made, to Christ or to God: subjectively there may be various emphases, but what actually takes place does so in reference to both. Atonement is a response to the claim, the deepest desire and wish, of the one to whom it is addressed. In the concrete this response is "being a son". However it is only in the son, not apart from him and his atonement, that the believer can be a "son" to the Father. Christ longs to be totally "Son" to the Father together with those who are his; the Father desires men to be sons to him in Christ.
So we cannot perform atonement to Christ without being sons with him to the Father; we cannot atone to the Father without being his sons in Christ.[17]
IV. The "Covenant" of Hearts
Having briefly sketched the two principal meanings or "moments" of reparation, we must now analyze another concept, that of the "alliance". Many of you know that in a notable Angelus address of 15 September 1985 our Holy Father spoke these words:
When the side of Christ was pierced with the centurion's lance, Simeon's prophecy was fulfilled in her: "And a sword will pierce through your own soul, also" (Lk. 2:35).
The words of the prophet are a foretelling of the definitive alliance of these hearts: of the Son and of the Mother; of the Mother and of the Son. "Heart of Jesus, in whom dwells all the fullness of the divinity." Heart of Mary ‑‑ Heart of the sorrowful Virgin ‑‑ heart of the Mother of God!
May our prayer of the Angelus, unite us today with that admirable alliance of hearts.[18]
The word translated into English as "alliance" here is the Italian word alleanza which is also the word used in Italian for covenant. Let us take note of some other instances when the Pope used this same word with reference to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
On 16 June of 1985 the Holy Father simply identified the Heart of Jesus as "our Covenant".[19] From what we have already said about the first meaning of reparation we can see how this is true. In a homily on 7 June 1991 in P eq \O(l,/)ock, Poland the Pope said
God's covenant with the chosen people is merely an image of that everlasting choice with which God embraces mankind through his only-begotten Son. The heart of the Son -- the heart of Jesus -- pierced with a spear at Golgotha is a manifestation of that universal choice and at the same time a manifestation of a new and everlasting Covenant.[20]
On 4 December 1991 in a general audience the Holy Father spoke about Mary as summing up in her very person the perfect response to "God's spousal covenant with the chosen people". "She became," he said, "the beginning of the new Israel ... in her spousal heart."[21]
As Jesus' Heart manifests God's new covenant with his people and may even be called "our covenant with God", so Mary's spousal Heart is the perfect response to God's new covenant with his people. Properly understood, we can say that the new covenant is made in the Heart of Jesus and endorsed by the response of the Heart of Mary. Mary has, in fact, made the response for all of us. Hence the Pope could say on 9 June 1985 "Through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, let us remain in the Covenant with the Heart of Jesus."[22]
V. Heart of Mary -- Heart of the Church
While in this brief space, we can hardly draw out all of the implications of this "covenant of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary", it is at least possible to underscore that the Heart of Mary stands for the Heart of the Church. This has been the insight of a number of distinguished theologians[23] and on 27 April 1981 Pope John Paul II explicitly described Mary as "the one in whom the heart of the Church beats".[24]
In speaking her fiat, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, Mary was the representative of the entire human race.[25] Not only was she the first recipient of the grace of the Redemption in her Immaculate Conception, she was also its first collaborator throughout the entire earthly life of her Son and especially by the sacrifice of her spousal and maternal heart on Calvary. In recommending that devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary should be joined to that to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Servant of God Pope Pius XII made this bold statement:
By God's Will, in carrying out the work of human Redemption the Blessed Virgin Mary was inseparably linked with Christ in such a manner that our salvation sprang from the love and sufferings of Jesus Christ to which the love and sorrows of His Mother were intimately united [ex Iesu Christi caritate eiusque cruciatibus cum amore doloribusque ipsius Matris intime consociatis sit nostra salus profecta].[26]
In his Apostolic Letter on the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering, Salvifici Doloris, Pope John Paul II has continued to speak of Mary's "sharing in the redemptive death of her Son" in a similarly bold way:
It was on Calvary that Mary's suffering, beside the suffering of Jesus, reached an intensity which can hardly be imagined from a human point of view but which was mysteriously and supernaturally fruitful for the Redemption of the world. Her ascent of Calvary and her standing at the foot of the cross together with the beloved disciple were a special sort of sharing in the redeeming death of her Son.[27]
Hence Mary is the perfect one to lead us in being cooperators, collaborators, "co-redeemers" in union with Jesus. I place the word "co-redeemer" in quotation marks because it can be misunderstood as placing Mary's reparation on the same level as that of Jesus and thus reducing him "to being half of a team of redeemers".[28] But if we begin to penetrate the meaning of St. Paul's words in Colossians 1:24, "In my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church" in the great Catholic tradition, beautifully articulated in Salvifici Doloris,[29] we realize that Mary's reparation is always, secondary, subordinate, dependent on that of Christ -- and yet for all that -- something that God willed for the accomplishment of the world's redemption!
This is a mystery and for some a scandal, but it is also part and parcel of our rich, inexhaustible Catholic Tradition. Although even the great Pius XII hesitated to use the term Co-redemptrix of Mary because of possible misunderstandings,[30] John Paul II has used it at least three times.[31] Perhaps he has done so because of his grappling with the mystery of redemptive suffering in his own life. Just last month in a youth rally in Agrigento he described Mary as "she who offered herself with Christ for the redemption of all humanity".[32]
VI. Our Part in the Alliance of Hearts
How, then, do we unite ourselves with "this admirable alliance of Hearts," this new covenant which Jesus has made on our behalf with the Father? We do so by following the lead of Mary, by learning how to be "co-redeemers" with her. The Holy Father has indicated how to do so in many different ways. We must "remain in the Covenant with the Heart of Jesus ... through the Immaculate Heart of Mary."[33] We must learn how to unite ourselves ever more closely to the reparation which Jesus has made for us and the intercession which he ever lives to make for us at the right hand of the Father (cf. Heb. 7:25).
This is indeed the program of a lifetime and it requires nothing less of us than that we become saints by the faithful living of our Baptismal commitment in union with the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. It means at least monthly confession and the communion of reparation on the first Friday and first Saturday of the month, but should not our every reception of the Eucharist be a "communion of reparation"? It means joining ourselves to all the intentions of the Heart of Jesus in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. It means praying the rosary in union with the intentions of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It means allowing all of our disappointments, frustrations and sufferings to be united with the reparation of Jesus.
In an address to the Apostleship of Prayer on 12 April 1985 the Holy Father exhorted the Superior General of the Jesuits, who bears the primary responsibility for this wonderful initiative,
to seek, in fidelity to the spirit of the Association, for more efficacious means adapted to our times to spread among all the faithful this awareness of collaborating with Christ the Redeemer through the offering of their own lives united and lived with the Heart of Christ in total consecration to his love and in reparation for the sins of the world, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary Most Holy.[34]
These are words which all of us must take to heart. The fact is that they have already been taken to heart by thousands, even millions of the faithful here in the Philippines. For this we must be especially grateful for the courageous leadership and foresight of the entire Philippine Episcopal Conference beginning with Cardinal Sin and Cardinal Vidal. In many ways the Philippines is already a shining example to the entire Catholic world of how to "unite with that admirable alliance of Hearts". But we cannot rest on our laurels. We must grow in assimilating the sentiments of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, in adoration, in consecration, in reparation, in holiness of life. Let us listen for a final time to what the Holy Father said in his Angelus address of 24 June 1979 of those "whose human hearts are inspired by this Divine Heart":
This spiritual bond always leads to a great awakening of apostolic zeal. Adorers of the Divine Heart become men with a sensitive conscience. And when it is granted to them to have relations with the Heart of our Lord and Master, in them also there then springs up the need of atonement for the sins of the world, for the indifference of so many hearts and their negligences.
How necessary this host of watchful hearts is in the Church in order that the Love of the Divine Heart may not remain isolated and unrequited! Among this host special mention deserves to go to all those who offer their sufferings as living victims in union with the Heart of Christ, pierced on the cross. Thus transformed with love, human suffering becomes a particular leaven of Christ's work of salvation in the Church.[35]
ABBREVIATIONS
AAS Acta Apostolicae Sedis (1909 -- )
Carlen 3 The Papal Encyclicals 1903-1939 (Raleigh, N. C.: McGrath Publishing Co., "Consortium Book," 1981)
DSp Marcel Viller, S.J. et al., Dictionnaire de Spiritualité Ascétique et Mystique (Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne et Ses Fils, 1937 -- )
Inseg Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, I (1978 ‑‑) (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1979 ‑‑)
ORE L'Osservatore Romano, weekly edition in English. First number = cumulative edition number; second number = page
26 June 1993
[1]AAS 20 (1928) 169 [trans. in Raoul Plus, S.J. Reparation: Its History, Doctrine and Practice (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1931) 95]. Pope Paul VI underscores the same fact in his Apostolic Letter Investigabiles Divitias Christi saying that the cultus of the Sacred Heart "consists essentially in the adoration and reparation due to Christ Our Lord" AAS 57 (1965) 300.
[2]Cf. Apostolic Constitution on the Revision of Indulgences Indulgentiarum Doctrina #2 in Austin Flannery, O.P., ed., Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1975) 63.
[3]Catechism of the Catholic Church (henceforth CCC) #616 (my trans.).
[4]Inseg IX/2 (1986) 392 [ORE 951:2].
[5]Inseg XII/2 (1989) 498-499 [ORE 1107:1].
[6]Louis Kondor, S.V.D. (ed.), Fatima in Lucia's Own Words trans. Dominican Nuns of Perpetual Rosary (Fatima: Postulation Centre, 1976) 63; Antonio Maria Martins, S.J., Memórias e Cartas da Irm eq \O(a,~) Lúcia (Porto: Sim eq \O(a,~)o Guim eq \O(a,~)es, Filhos, Lda., 1973) 119.
[7]Divine Mercy in My Soul: The DIARY of the Servant of God Sister M. Faustina Kowalska (Stockbridge, MA: Marian Press, 1987) #475, 476.
[8]AAS 20 (1928) 177; Carlen 3:327.
[9]Walter J. Schmitz, S.S. (ed.), Collectio Rituum (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1964) 570.
[10]Autobiography of Dina Bélanger (Mother Marie Sainte-Cécile de Rome) trans. M. St. Stephen, R.J.M. (Montréal: Religious of Jesus and Mary, 1984) 322.
[11]In Ioannis evangelium, tract. XXVI, 4; AAS 20 (1928) 173 [Carlen III:325].
[12]AAS 20 (1928) 174; trans. in Francis Larkin, SS.CC., Understanding the Heart second, revised edition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1980) 66.
[13]Cf. Arthur Burton Calkins, "The Tripartite Biblical Vision of Man: A Key to the Christian Life," Doctor Communis 43 (1990) 149-152.
[14]AAS 20 (1928) 174 [Carlen 3:325].
[15]Pensées, 736; ORE 1273:1.
[16]This is witnessed to by the article on reparation by Édouard Glotin, S.J. in the Dictionnaire de Spiritualité 13:369-413 which is an excellent historical study almost exclusively devoted to the reparation offered to Christ. The much briefer article on reparation by Andrea Tessarolo in the Dizionario Enciclopedico di Spiritualità (Roma: Città Nuova Editrice, 1990) 3:2175-2177 does have the advantage of providing a broader theological picture and of stressing the unique reparation of Jesus Christ.
[17]Norbert Hoffmann, "Atonement and the Spirituality of the Sacred Heart: An Attempt at an Elucidation by Means of the Principle of `Representation'," Faith in Christ and the Worship of Christ trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986) 197.
[18]Inseg VIII/2 (1985) 671 [ORE 904:1].
[19]Inseg VIII/1 (1985) 1856 [ORE 891:1].
[20]ORE 1196:5.
[21]ORE 1219:15.
[22]Inseg VIII/1 (1985) 1759 [ORE 890:1].
[23]Cf. M. J. Scheeben, Mariology trans. Rev. T. L. M. J. Geukers (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1948, 1953), I:170, 233-234; II:225, 250, 255; Bertrand de Margerie, S.J., Heart of Mary -- Heart of the Church trans. Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P. (Washington, NJ: AMI Press, 1992) esp. 49-68; John A. Schug, O.F.M. Cap., Mary, Mother (Springfield, MA: St. Francis Chapel Press, 1992) 156 [Ernest Mura, R.S.V.], 164 [Cyril Vollert, S.J.], 168 [Narcissus García Garcés, C.M.F.].
[24]Inseg IV/1 (1981) 1056 [ORE 683:4].
[25]Summa Theologiæ III, q. 30, a. 1.
[26]AAS 48 (1956) 352 [Haurietis Aquas: The Sacred Heart Encyclical of Pope Pius XII Vatican Polyglot Press trans. revised by Francis Larkin, SS.CC. (Orlando, FL.: Sacred Heart Publication Center, 1974) 47]. Emphasis my own.
[27]Inseg VII/1 (1984) 309 [St. Paul Editions, 40-41].
[28]Eamon R. Carroll, O.Carm., Understanding the Mother of Jesus (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1979) 93.
[29]Cf. esp. #24 and also Hoffmann 185.
[30]Cf. Michael O'Carroll, C.S.Sp., Theotokos: A Theological Encyclopedia of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, Inc.; Dublin: Dominican Publications, 1982) 307-308.
[31]On 31 January 1985, in his address at the Marian shrine in Guayaquil, Ecuador [Inseg VIII/1 (1985) 318-321; ORE 876:7]; on 31 March 1985, in his Palm Sunday Angelus address [Inseg VIII/1 (1985) 890; ORE 880:12] and in his Angelus address of 6 October 1991 [ORE 1211:4].
[32]ORE 1292:7.
[33]Inseg VIII/1 (1985) 1759 [ORE 890:1].
[34]Inseg VIII/1 (1985) 1030 [ORE 883:5].
[35]Inseg II/1 (1979) 1617 [ORE 588:2].
Monsignor Arthur B. Calkins