On June 11 the Catholic Church celebrates the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Many Protestants and even many Catholics may not understand the meaning of this special devotion.
Simply put, the reference to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a reference to His incredible mercy, revealed to the world in His passion, death and resurrection. Speaking on this subject two years ago, Pope Benedict said, "In biblical language, heart indicates the center of the person where his sentiments and intentions dwell. In the Heart of the Redeemer we adore God's love for humanity, His will for universal salvation, and His infinite mercy. Practicing devotion to the Sacred Heart of Christ therefore means adoring that Heart, which, after having loved us to the end, was pierced by a spear and from high on the cross poured out blood and water, an inexhaustible source of new life."
How much our modern world needs to understand the very heart of Christ...His deepest longing is that we discover how much He loves us and that we respond to that love with our love. Over the centuries many popes have reminded humanity that without Christ as Lord, life has no real meaning - man merely gropes in the dark to find himself. Pope John Paul II introduced the Church into its third millennium with a mandate to become "Apostles of Divine Mercy" and Pope Benedict constantly reminds us of the necessity of discovering the merciful heart of Christ who reveals Himself to us if we open ourselves to Him.Central to receiving Christ is receiving Him in Eucharist, where He is present - body, blood, soul and divinity. Sadly, Protestantism long ago broke with the Church on this essential truth.
Remember that biblical support for Christ's presence in the Eucharist is widespread in both the Old and New Testament. Certainly John 6: 48-59 is a central passage in understanding this early teaching of the Church:
"I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh...Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them...This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever."
Six times, Christ states that we must "eat his flesh" - the Greek word that is used four of those six times is a very graphic word that means to chew - it is never used elsewhere in scripture symbolically. In fact, a few verses later, you can read that some followers found Jesus' words on this subject so difficult that they chose not to follow Him. Christ could have restated His words at that point so that they would stay. But He did not.
Or consider Paul's admonition in 1st Corinthians 11: "Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord easts and drinks judgment on himself." Clearly, Paul is charging the church at Corinth to recognize the bread for what it truly is.
Read especially 1st Corinthians 11: 24-25: "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." The word re-member actually means to re-constitute something - our culture has lost that meaning to a more general concept of thinking about a past event, etc. In fact, the Greek word for "remembrance" in this passage is a very technical word and rarely used in Scripture: outside of its use in the Last Supper admonition, it is used only once other time in the New Testament - in Hebrews 10:3, where the remembrance there is defined as "carrying out a sacrifice." The word's meaning is along the lines of "re-constitute something by participating in a sacrifice."
Aside from biblical support, consider early church history. Everything written about the Eucharist in those early centuries accepted the real presence of Christ in the elements of Communion. Ignatius was the second bishop of Antioch and died a martyr at about the same time the Apostle John died. In speaking about the Docetist heretics, who denied the humanity of Jesus, he wrote, "they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ.." Another Church Father, Irenaeus, was a disciple of Polycarp, who himself studied under John. Irenaeus used the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist to prove the resurrection of the Christian dead: "The Eucharist becomes the body of Christ. How can they say that the flesh which is nourished with the body of the Lord and with His blood passes into corruption and partakes not of life?"
For the first 1500 years of the Church, there were no exceptions to this belief - it was a universal teahing of the entire Church. Not until rationalism started to transform the thinking of Europe would the reformation call into question the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
May all Christians (Protestant and Catholic) celebrate this beautiful notion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a special devotion to His love and mercy for each of us. And to our dear Protestant brothers and sisters, may Christ's real presence in the Eucharist become a source of truth and love that transforms lives and leads to real unity.
Now go be a saint!