Healing the Whole through the Sacred Heart

In his recent encyclical, “He Loved Us” (“Dilexit nos”), Pope Francis speaks of the importance of the heart, which shapes our spiritual identity and puts us in communion with others, uniting the fragments of a fractured world. Francis calls us to return to the heart, for the heart is our inmost core; “the part of us that is neither appearance or illusion, but is instead authentic, real, entirely ‘who we are’” (5). We are more capable of knowing reality when we grasp it with the heart. In the heart, the dwelling place of love, everything finds its unity. He continues, “if love reigns in our heart, we become, in a complete and luminous way, the persons we are meant to be, for every human being is created above all else for love. In the deepest fibre of our being, we were made to love and to be loved” (21).

Francis counters our temptation to conclude that our world is losing its heart with a call to change the world, beginning with the heart, for “…our fulfilment as human beings is found in love…” (23). He writes, “It is only by starting from the heart that our communities will succeed in uniting and reconciling differing minds and wills, so that the Spirit can guide us in unity as brothers and sisters. Reconciliation and peace are also born of the heart” (28). It is there that we learn to relate to one another in wholesome ways that lead to justice. When our hearts are united with the heart of Christ, Francis proclaims, miracles are possible. Since Christ is the heart of the world, the Sacred Heart is “the unifying principle of all reality.” For all creatures “are moving forward with us and through us towards a common point of arrival, which is God, in that transcendent fullness where the risen Christ embraces and illumines all things” (31).^[1]

According to Francis, the divine love of Jesus is inseparable from his human love (60). He draws on the words of Pope Benedict XVI who wrote: “Every person needs a ‘centre’ for his or her own life, a source of truth and goodness to draw upon in the events, situations and struggles of daily existence. All of us, when we pause in silence, need to feel not only the beating of our own heart, but deeper still, the beating of a trustworthy presence, perceptible with faith’s senses and yet much more real: the presence of Christ, the heart of the world” (81)^[2] This is a powerful image!

How might we respond to these words, not only as individuals but collectively, as Christophany Groups?  How might we feel the beating of our own heart as well as those of our group members as part of a unified whole in Christ? What needs to be cultivated, overcome, or healed in order to do this?

In The Not-Yet God, Ilia Delio recalls Teilhard’s words: “We are united to Christ by entering into communion with all people. We will be saved by an option that has chosen the whole.”^[3] She explains that, for Teilhard, the ultimate test for evaluating religions is whether they have the capacity to evolve.  Christophany Groups are an integral part of this evolution. Wholes within wholes, they are sacred heart spaces wherein we become who we are meant to be as people of love so that we might, in turn, participate in healing the Whole.

How do you see this happening in your Christophany Groups? What stories might be beneficial for us to hear? I invite you to share in the blog area below.

I recently received a wonderful update letter from our Midwest Christophany Group Retreat, with their permission you can read it here!

[In my next post I will feature insights on integrating our diversity from Barbara Fleischer’s book Facilitating for Growth.

^[1] Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (24 May 2015), 83: AAS 107 (2015), 880.

^[2] Angelus, 1 June 2008: L’Osservatore Romano, 2-3 June 2008, p. 1

^[3] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Science and Christ, trans. Rene Hague (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 77; quoted in Ilia Delio, The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Relational Whole (New York: Orbis Books, 2023), 226.