Month of the Sacred Heart: Let “Heart Speak to Heart”!

Month of the Sacred Heart: Let “Heart Speak to Heart”!

Fr. Peter Thoại

As spring gives way to summer, we enter the month of June with its several significant feast days. This year, with Pope Leo XIV’s newly released encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, we can let our hearts be burnt even more by the fire of God’s love. It’s fitting to observe the four-century-long tradition of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, while also reflecting on the Church’s moral warning about “the evil that clearly agitates the human heart” (MH, 121) in this age of artificial intelligence.

In most cultures, the heart is seen as the seat of emotions and human affection. Yet in Scripture, the heart signifies even more: it is the very “source of life” (Proverbs 4:23). King Solomon asked God for “a listening heart,” not merely an intelligent mind or a strong will, so that he might discern right from wrong (1 Kings 3:9). Prophet Jeremiah warned that “more tortuous than anything is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Prophet Ezekiel spoke of Israel’s conversion as the replacement of “hearts of stone” with “hearts of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). God called Israel into the wilderness “to speak to her heart” (Hosea 2:16), and invited His people to “give me your heart” (Proverbs 23:26) as a sign of returning to Him. Here, the heart symbolizes the transformation of the whole person and the total gift of self in true love.

Today, we live in a time when human-made technology can solve problems faster than its creators themselves. Less than two years after the late Pope warned against a “heartless” society marked by narcissism and self-centeredness (Dilexit Nos, 17), the world has witnessed moral questions of good and evil, life and death, which are increasingly influenced by the so-called “AI.” What is truly concerning is not that AI may be “smarter” or “faster” than human beings, but that people are beginning to entrust their lives and dignity entirely to AI, passively submitting to algorithmic analysis and computational decisions. Even worse, many people, often without realizing it, are gradually losing not only their capacity for reasoning, but also their conscience and their freedom to act and to love as God does. They begin to lose the image of God within themselves and become “heartless.” They are losing their very selves!

Facing a modern world that appears well off, well connected and highly productive, yet at the same time is full of egoistic pride, lacking in compassion, and losing its sense of sin, Pope Leo XIV raises a timeless moral voice to all humanity. He reminds us of the noble dignity of the human person, “created by God in all its grandeur” (MH, 1), and warns that “technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it” (MH, 9). Humanity is magnificent not because we create intelligent machines, multitask efficiently, produce more things, or gain power over more people. Humanity is magnificent because we are created in the image and likeness of God, possessing “a heart open to others, an intelligence willing to listen, and a will that seeks what unites rather than what separates” (MH, 15).

Meditating on the Sacred Heart of Jesus is not only an occasion to relive the immense love of God pouring out through the fragile and mortal body of Jesus, but also a moment to examine our own hearts. Do we often place commercial efficiency above human dignity? Are we willing to accept our own limitations so as to leave room for Jesus to speak to our hearts and fill it with love and compassion for our neighbors? (cf. MH, 119–120). Are we ready to respond to God with a pure heart like that of Mary and the saints? Keeping in mind of the grandeur of humanity, and remembering that, although many new things constantly emerge in our world, the human heart capable of imitating the Sacred Heart remains unchanged? Let us echo the prayer of the great saint of our modern age, Saint John Henry Newman, who was well known for his encounter with the living Heart of Jesus in the Eucharist: “O make my heart beat with Thy Heart.”