On the other hand, love and the human heart do not always go together, since hatred, indifference and selfishness can also reign in our hearts. Yet we cannot attain our fulfilment as human beings unless we open our hearts to others; only through love do we become fully ourselves. The deepest part of us, created for love, will fulfil God’s plan only if we learn to love. And the heart is the symbol of that love.
The eternal Son of God, in his utter transcendence, chose to love each of us with a human heart. His human emotions became the sacrament of that infinite and endless love. His heart, then, is not merely a symbol for some disembodied spiritual truth. In gazing upon the Lord’s heart, we contemplate a physical reality, his human flesh, which enables him to possess genuine human emotions and feelings, like ourselves, albeit fully transformed by his divine love. Our devotion must ascend to the infinite love of the Person of the Son of God, yet we need to keep in mind that his divine love is inseparable from his human love. The image of his heart of flesh helps us to do precisely this.
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. Pius XII observed that the Gospel, in referring to the love of Christ’s heart, speaks “not only of divine charity but also human affection”. Indeed, “the heart of Jesus Christ, hypostatically united to the divine Person of the Word, beyond doubt throbbed with love and every other tender affection”. 36Encyclical Letter Haurietis Aquas (15 May 1956), I: AAS 48 (1956), 323-324.
The Fathers of the Church, opposing those who denied or downplayed the true humanity of Christ, insisted on the concrete and tangible reality of the Lord’s human affections. Saint Basil emphasized that the Lord’s incarnation was not something fanciful, and that “the Lord possessed our natural affections”. 37Ep. 261, 3: PG 32, 972. Saint John Chrysostom pointed to an example: “Had he not possessed our nature, he would not have experienced sadness from time to time”. 38In Io. homil. 63, 2: PG 59, 350. Saint Ambrose stated that “in taking a soul, he took on the passions of the soul”. 39De fide ad Gratianum, II, 7, 56: PL 16, 594 (ed. 1880). For Saint Augustine, our human affections, which Christ assumed, are now open to the life of grace: “The Lord Jesus assumed these affections of our human weakness, as he did the flesh of our human weakness, not out of necessity, but consciously and freely... lest any who feel grief and sorrow amid the trials of life should think themselves separated from his grace”. 40Enarr. in Ps. 87, 3: PL 37, 1111. Finally, Saint John Damascene viewed the genuine affections shown by Christ in his humanity as proof that he assumed our nature in its entirety in order to redeem and transform it in its entirety: Christ, then, assumed all that is part of human nature, so that all might be sanctified. 41Cf. De fide orth. 3, 6, 20: PG 94, 1006, 1081.
Here, we can benefit from the thoughts of a theologian who maintains that, “due to the influence of Greek thought, theology long relegated the body and feelings to the world of the pre-human or sub-human or potentially inhuman; yet what theology did not resolve in theory, spirituality resolved in practice. This, together with popular piety, preserved the relationship with the corporal, psychological and historical reality of Jesus. The Stations of the Cross, devotion to Christ’s wounds, his Precious Blood and his Sacred Heart, and a variety of Eucharist devotions... all bridged the gaps in theology by nourishing our hearts and imagination, our tender love for Christ, our hope and memory, our desires and feelings. Reason and logic took other directions”. 42OLEGARIO GONZÁLEZ DE CARDEDAL, La entraña del cristianismo, Salamanca, 2010, 70-71.