Pope Francis has published a new encyclical overnight entitled Dilexit nos (“He loved us”) focusing on the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
The 141-page encyclical is the fourth of his 11-year pontificate, following 2013’s Lumen fidei (co-written with Benedict XVI), 2015’s Laudato si’, and 2020’s Fratelli tutti.
The encyclical is divided into five chapters.
The first chapter focuses on the importance of the heart, with Pope Francis saying in this time of great social and technological upheaval, we once again needed to start speaking about the heart. “In this age of artificial intelligence, we cannot forget that poetry and love are necessary to save our humanity,” he wrote.
The short second chapter focuses on the concrete actions and words of Christ which reveal His love for humanity.
In the third chapter, the Holy Father says the devotion to Jesus’ Sacred Heart is not merely a devotion to a bodily organ, but instead, the contemplation of the whole Jesus Christ. “The expressive and symbolic image of Christ’s heart is not the only means granted us by the Holy Spirit for encountering the love of Christ, yet it is … an especially privileged one,” he writes. He also invited people to use the devotion to the Sacred Heart to combat the rise in secularisation.
The fourth chapter works through the history of the devotion to Christ’s heart, leading up to the revelations received by French nun Margaret Mary Alacoque in the 17th century which popularised the devotion. He said the enduring strength of the devotion shows it is not “an admirable relic from the past” but rather “a fine spirituality suited to other times.”
In the final chapter, Pope Francis considers how people can respond to this encounter with Christ’s loving heart. “Christ’s love can give a heart to our world and revive love wherever we think that the ability to love has been definitively lost,” he said. He added the Church also needed this love, “lest the love of Christ be replaced with outdated structures and concerns, excessive attachment to our own ideas and opinions, and fanaticism in any number of forms.”
The full encyclical has been published in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish and Portuguese and is available on the Holy See’s website.
You can read the full encyclical here.