Divine Mercy: The Heart of the Gospel

The Sacred Heart and The Divine Mercy 65 The Church seems in a special way to profess the mercy of God and to venerate it when she directs herself to the Heart of Christ. In fact, it is precisely this drawing close to Christ in the mystery o f His Heart which enables us to dwell on ... the merciful love of the Father, which constituted the central content o f the messianic mission of the Son o f Man.18 In short, according to saints, visionaries, and popes, we need to be devoted to the Sacred Heart o f Jesus and, at the same time, to have a spe­ cial devotion to the Divine Mercy that flows to us from His Heart. 2. The Sacred Heart overflows with Merciful Love for us We need to try to understand, theologically, why it is said that the Divine Mercy and the Sacred Heart are inseparable. Basically, there is a short answer, and a long answer to this question. The short answer is: Jesus has only one Heart! His Sacred Heart is His Merciful Heart - they are one and the same. The Sacred Heart overflows with merciful love for us, and that is why, in principle at least, these two devotions are inseparable.19 The long answer to this question, however, takes us right back to the fundamentals o f the theology o f the Heart of Jesus. The human heart is the symbol o f the deepest mystery o f a person. When we talk about someone’s heart, we are talking about what really “makes him tick:” what the person really, deep down, thinks and feels and desires. As the Catechism tells us in no. 2563: The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit o f God can fathom the human heart, and know it fully.20 Again, our heart is the deepest mystery o f our person; it is our “hid­ den center,” from which most of what we think and do and say pro­ ceeds.21 According to the Bible, some people are cold-hearted, or hard-heart­ ed; they have hearts o f “stone” (e.g. Ezek. 11:19). The mystery o f the Heart o f Jesus, however, has been revealed to us through the gospels, and beautifully expressed in His apparitions to St. Margaret Mary.