Chapter Three of Dilexit Nos

This is the fourth in a series of reflections by Nathaniel Marx on the final encyclical letter of Pope Francis, Dilexit Nos.

The Whole World In His Heart

Most observers looking to connect Leo XIV with Leo XIII have focused on the “Social Pope’s” 1891 encyclical “on the condition of the working classes,” Rerum Novarum. Fewer recall his 1899 encyclical Annum Sacrum as a document of lasting significance. In it, the earlier Pope Leo decreed that the whole human race should be consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. His decision granted a request that devotees had repeatedly submitted to Rome ever since Pius IX extended the Feast of the Sacred Heart to the entire Latin Church in 1856.

Leo XIII had already raised the Feast to the dignity of the first class while considering the doctrinal propriety of consecrating to Christ not only Catholic nations, or even all professing Christians, but the human race in its entirety. The pope concluded that his office as universal pastor demanded concern for the salvation of all souls.

We hold the place of Him who came to save that which was lost, and who shed His blood for the salvation of the whole human race. And so We greatly desire to bring to the true life those who sit in the shadow of death. (Leo XIII, Annum Sacrum, 9)

So, on June 11, 1899, Pope Leo XIII and the Catholic faithful led by their pastors around the world prayed the act of consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. While invoking Christ as “King,” Leo’s prayer avoids triumphalism and instead expresses confidence in the universality of Christ’s love.

Many, indeed, have never known you, many too, despising your precepts, have rejected you. Have mercy on them all, most merciful Jesus, and draw them to your sacred heart…
Make the earth resound from pole to pole with one cry: Praise to the divine heart that wrought our salvation; to it be glory and honor forever.
Amen.

Today, as we approach the 126th anniversary of the consecration of the whole human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, another Pope Leo preaches that the boundless love of Jesus makes his followers “part of a great plan that concerns all of humanity.”

Christ prays that we may “all be one” (Jn 17:21). This is the greatest good that we can desire, for this universal union brings about among his creatures the eternal communion of love that is God himself: the Father who gives life, the Son who receives it and the Spirit who shares it…
The unity for which Jesus prays is thus a communion grounded in the same love with which God loves, which brings life and salvation into the world. As such, it is firstly a gift that Jesus comes to bring. From his human heart, the Son of God prays to the Father in these words: “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (Jn 17:23). (Leo XIV, Homily for the 7th Sunday of Easter, June 1, 2025)

Echoing his predecessor’s praise for the “divine heart” that wrought the whole world’s salvation, Leo XIV cites the prayer that comes from the Savior’s “human heart” as clear evidence that “God has always desired to draw all people to himself.”

A Popular Devotion

Between the two Leos stand three more encyclicals on the Sacred Heart of Jesus: Pius XI’s Miserentissimus Redemptor (1928), Pius XII’s Haurietis Aquas (1956), and Dilexit Nos (2024) from Pope Francis. In chapter three of Dilexit Nos, Francis also cites catecheses of John Paul II and Benedict XVI on devotion to the Sacred Heart (DN 78–81). All these “recent teachings of the magisterium” aim to demonstrate the primordial roots, contemporary relevance, and universal significance of a devotion that emerged in Western European Catholicism of the post-Tridentine period.

Above all, the recent popes defend the popularity of devotion to the heart of Jesus. They encourage the Christian faithful by distinguishing their authentic popular piety from sentimentalism and superstition. The most important element of this defense is to show that devotion to Christ’s heart harmonizes with revealed doctrine about Christ and the Holy Trinity. This is the object of Francis’s Christological and Trinitarian reflections in chapter three. Devotion to the Sacred Heart must enact in adoration the faith that the church professes—specifically, faith in the fully human incarnation of the fully divine Son of God.

Devotion to the heart of Christ is not the veneration of a single organ apart from the Person of Jesus. What we contemplate and adore is the whole Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, represented by an image that accentuates his heart. That heart of flesh is seen as the privileged sign of the inmost being of the incarnate Son and his love, both divine and human. (DN 48)

The “privilege” enjoyed by the image of the Sacred Heart is, for Francis and his predecessors, is not the consequence of some magisterial fiat. Nor was the symbol “devised at a desk or designed by an artist” (DN 52). Rather, the importance of the heart of Jesus was first recognized in the pious devotion of the Christian people, and it still occupies a central place there. “Since the heart continues to be seen in the popular mind as the affective centre of each human being, it remains the best means of signifying the divine love of Christ, united forever and inseparably to his wholly human love” (DN 61).

The 2001 Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy affirms that “of all devotions, devotion to the Sacred Heart was, and remains, one of the most widespread and popular in the Church” (DPPL 166). The directory’s guidelines aim to avoid distortions that Francis recognizes as a real threat to authentically Christian devotion to the heart of Jesus. “As a part that stands for the whole, we could easily misinterpret it, were we to contemplate it apart from the Lord himself” (DN 55). The directory and Dilexit Nos both rely on “the light of the Scriptures” to show that “the term ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus’ denotes the entire mystery of Christ” (DPPL 166). The reading of Scripture should likewise have a prominent place in pious exercises connected with the Sacred Heart.

The Universality of the Heart

Francis may take claims about the popularity of devotion to the Sacred Heart a step further than his predecessors, for he explicitly asserts that the metaphor of the heart is transhistorical and cross-cultural.

Universal human experience has made the image of the heart something unique. Indeed, throughout history and in different parts of the world, it has become a symbol of personal intimacy, affection, emotional attachment and capacity for love. (DN 53)

While the claim that the heart is a universal sign of love should be rigorously investigated, it is plausibly rooted in the basic symbolism of the body. More important, by resting the “unique symbolic value” of the heart on its appeal across time and cultures, Francis denies that “merely conventional” representations imposed through cultural imperialism are the source of continued vitality in devotion to the heart of Jesus (DN 53).

This does not imply that Francis denigrates First Friday devotions, Holy Hours on Thursdays, or other traditional pious exercises. On the contrary, he heartily recommends these, along with the practices of offering consolation and reparation to the heart of Christ, which receive extended treatment in chapters four and five. “Even so,” Francis says, devotion to the “privileged” image of Christ’s heart “constantly needs to be enriched, deepened, and renewed through meditation, the reading of the Gospel, and growth in spiritual maturity” (DN 82). To remain nourishing, contemporary devotion to the Sacred Heart especially needs to combine “personal spiritual experience” and “communal missionary commitment” in new ways relevant to the different contexts in which the church proclaims the Gospel of Christ’s love (DN 91).

The Honor Given to the Image

While the outward forms of devotion to Christ’s heart differ and evolve, the constant teaching of the church is that we worship in truth the one whose image we venerate. The principle—as important to liturgical prayer as it is to popular piety—has its classic expression in the teaching of St. John of Damascus and the decree of the Second Council of Nicaea. In Dilexit Nos, however, Pope Francis quotes Pope Leo XIII.

Since there is in the Sacred Heart a symbol and a sensible image of the infinite love of Jesus Christ which moves us to love one another,¹ therefore is it fit and proper that we should consecrate ourselves to His most Sacred Heart—an act which is nothing else than an offering and a binding of oneself to Jesus Christ, seeing that whatever honor, veneration, and love is given to this divine Heart is really and truly given to Christ Himself. (Leo XIII, Annum Sacrum, 8)

Deeply traditional, yet groundbreaking in more ways than one, Francis’s predecessor and Leo XIV’s namesake set a precedent linking this most popular of Catholic devotions to love for all people of the human race. Francis can affirm, then, that there is nothing esoteric or isolating in devotion to the heart of Jesus. We do not “worship it for its own sake, but because with this heart the incarnate Son is alive, loves us, and receives our love in return” (DN 50). And we shall see that the indispensable image of Christ through which we “‘return love for love’” is our neighbor (DN 166).

1. Or “moves us to return love for love,” according to the English translation of Dilexit Nos, which also uses this quote from Annum Sacrum as the title of chapter five: “Love for Love.” ↩︎