The Blessed Heart of Christ the King

The Blessed Heart of Christ the King

To celebrate the Heart of Christ-King is to enter into a marvelous story of the love of God for the Church and for Mankind. It is important to see how great Saints also contributed for this story. But no less important is to look  in the Bible for the roots of the Devotion to the Heart of Jesus and to hear and meditate on the words of Popes about this devotion.
 
The Heart of Christ Redeemer, pierced by the soldier’s sword on the afternoon of Holy Friday and shown to St. Thomas during Christ’s apparition on the First Sunday after Easter, is something extraordinary, because it is the symbol of the love of God for mankind. To speak of the Heart of Jesus is to speak of His Divine Person, Who has loved us with His  whole divine love, His whole Trinitarian love and with His whole human love, sine He is the Son of Mary of Nazareth, truly man. What is at stake here is the contemplation of the love of the Father revealed in the Heart of Jesus, the contemplation of every scene of the Gospel, and then to understand that it is He Who loves, heals, forgives, feeds, gives His life for all. God is Love, God is Heart. God the Father reveals Himself in the Heart of His Son.
 
Pope Benedict XVI, in his first Encyclical ‘God is Love’, mentions three times the pierced Heart. This Heart is the fount of life and love, of grace and holiness, of peace and joy, of mercy and divine union with the Trinitarian love. To speak of the Heart of Jesus is to speak of the Jesus Who loves us with all His love, is to speak of the Heart of God, of the Man Jesus, Word of the Father and Son of Mary. In Him, in His Heart, formed by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mother, are all the treasures of wisdom and science. He is the abyss of all virtues and the ocean of all graces. He is the fire of love which lights up the whole world, the heart of every man and woman.
 
The Devotion to the Heart of Jesus is not some old thing. It is very timely, for we are talking about Trinitarian love, about a God Who is Heart. Thence the need for an evangelization from the heart – that marvelous symbol of love. Thence the need for a biblical catechesis on the Heart of Jesus. Thence the urgency in contemplating Him, in praising Him, in offering reparation to Him for the sins of the world. The Monument to Christ-King is graced, is honored to have as mission to show more and more to the world the mystery of this Heart of Christ Redeemer…to show and to help everybody to love Him, to venerate Him, to adore Him, to praise Him, to offer Him reparation for the innumerous sins of the world. The Devotion to the Heart of Jesus is the devotion to Love, to God Who is Love. What a great spirituality that of this Shrine! What a gift, what a grace God and the Church have granted to it: to be a visible sign of love and to make known the Heart Who loves with an infinite love all of us who visit Him and places us in His Heart, thus firing us up in His love and making each pilgrim an apostle of hope.