Pope Leo XIV: The Sacred Heart teaches us how to love
Pope Leo XIV emphasized that Christ’s love lifts the wounded, restoring confidence, dignity and hope. He highlighted that God’s love, expressed through the Sacred Heart, remains faithful amid incomprehension, rejection, fear, sadness and resistance. The homily delivered at Gran Canaria Stadium on June 11 focused on the transformative power of love. The article presents a translation of the Pope’s words pending the official version.
4 months ago
Pope Leo XIV emphasized that the love revealed in the Sacred Heart of Jesus is not merely a comforting gesture but a transformative force that restores dignity, confidence, and hope to those who suffer. Drawing on the Mass readings in Gran Canaria, he linked divine love to a call for humility, active solidarity, and the integration of the marginalized into the full life of the Church 1.
The Pope explained that Christ’s love “does not merely lift up the wounded, but helps them regain confidence, dignity, and hope” 1. He described this love as “immutable and faithful” even when faced with rejection or fear 1.
From Deuteronomy, Leo XIV highlighted God’s choice of Israel “out of pure love,” stressing that divine love is the soil in which the vocation to love takes root 1. The First Letter of John reminded the faithful that God sent His Son so humanity could live through Him, prompting the Pope to urge believers to “encourage the wounded to get up and start to walk again” 1.
The pontiff urged a love that moves beyond philanthropy, urging integration of people—especially migrants and the poor—into community life so they can develop spiritually, intellectually, and physically 1. He cited Pope Francis’ encyclical Dilexit Nos to stress that the best response to Christ’s love is love for “brothers and sisters…most in need, defenseless, and incapable of giving anything in return” 1.
Leo XIV taught that humility is essential to perceiving the heartbeat of love; the proud “cannot hear” it because they are deafened by ego 1. Quoting Saint Augustine, he linked humility with peace and authentic love, urging the faithful to “get off our pedestals of arrogance” and recognize one another as brothers and sisters 1.
Concluding, the Pope called the Church to be the “living presence of the Lord” by spreading mercy and peace, hoping that such love will help end wars and foster a new humanity reconciled in love 1.
Investigate how the Sacred Heart doctrine informs Catholic teachings on love
The doctrine of the Sacred Heart provides a concrete, personal, and merciful “face” of Christian love: it centers Catholic teaching on love as God’s initiative, made visible in Christ’s pierced Heart, and it shows how that love must reshape both personal virtue (charity) and lived charity toward others.
Catholic teaching does not treat devotion to the Sacred Heart as a purely sentimental extra. The Church explicitly explains that the phrase “Sacred Heart of Jesus” should be understood as denoting “the entire mystery of Christ”—the totality of who He is in His most intimate core: Son of God, infinite charity, and the principal source of salvation and sanctification.
In this sense, the Sacred Heart is not merely about Christ’s emotions; it is about divine-human love in the one person of the Word Incarnate. Pius XII teaches that the devotion is “nothing else than devotion to the divine and human love of the Incarnate Word” and to the love by which the Father and the Spirit care for sinful humanity.
Likewise, Haurietis Aquas emphasizes that Christ “wished…to invite the minds of men to a contemplation of, and a devotion to, the mystery of God’s merciful love” and to establish the Heart as a sign/pledge of mercy and grace for the needs of the Church.
One of the most distinctive ways the Sacred Heart informs Catholic teaching on love is by clarifying how God’s love should be understood—especially in contrast to misreadings that emphasize divine severity while neglecting love.
Pius XI describes the historical context of the Sacred Heart’s promotion: when “charity…was growing cold,” the Church made visible the Divine Charity through a form of worship specifically honoring the Most Sacred Heart—the Heart in which “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” are hidden.
The encyclical also ties the Sacred Heart directly to a controversy about how God is to be loved. It contrasts the “Jansenist heresy,” which—according to Pius XI—taught that God “was not to be loved as a father but rather to be feared as an implacable judge.” In response, Pius XI presents the Sacred Heart as Christ showing Himself as “standard of peace and charity,” a “sign of friendly” mercy meant to heal that coldness.
The Church’s later liturgical guidance (Directory on Popular Piety) explicitly draws the same lesson: devotion to the Sacred Heart served as an “antidote” when Jansenism proclaimed “the rigours of divine justice,” and it “aroused in the faithful a love for Our Lord and a trust in his infinite mercy symbolized by his Heart.”
So the Sacred Heart doctrine forms Catholic teaching on love by teaching that true worship of God’s justice includes—without contradiction—trust in His mercy, because mercy is not an optional sentiment but an integral “symbol” and expression of Christ’s love.
Catholic moral teaching identifies charity as the central shape of Christian life. The Catechism states:
“This is the path of charity, that is, of the love of God and of neighbor. Charity is the greatest social commandment… It requires the practice of justice… Charity inspires a life of self-giving.”
The Sacred Heart devotion intensifies this by tying charity to Christ’s own merciful love. Pius XII explains that devotion to the Heart moves one from contemplating “love…perceived by the senses” toward adoring “infused heavenly love,” and finally toward reflection and adoration of the divine love of the Word Incarnate—because Christ’s human love and feelings are linked to and subordinate to divine love in the unity of the Person.
In other words, the Sacred Heart becomes a school of love where the believer learns that charity is not merely an idea but a way of living: Christ’s love is incarnate, and therefore Christian love must become concrete—patient, persevering, and real.
This connects directly to the Catechism’s portrait of charity in practice, quoting St. Paul’s description:
“Charity is patient and kind… it does not insist on its own way… it is not irritable or resentful… it bears all things… endures all things.”
The Sacred Heart thus informs Catholic teaching on love by grounding it in Christ’s Heart-to-heart charity—love that can endure and transform.
Because the Sacred Heart is Christ’s “entire mystery,” it also forms how Catholics understand the object and extent of love.
The Catechism teaches that Christ “died out of love for us, while we were still ‘enemies,’” and then commands the disciples to love “as he does,” including “even our enemies,” and to make oneself “the neighbor of those farthest away,” explicitly including “children and the poor.”
Sacred Heart devotion—rightly understood—functions as a training of the will and imagination so that this demanding love becomes possible: the believer does not start from human feelings but from union with Christ’s merciful love, which “pours out” salvation and sanctification.
John Paul II expresses the same core idea in a pastoral way: Christianity is “the religion of love,” and the Sacred Heart is the “image of this infinite and merciful love” the Father poured out through the Son. The goal of evangelization is to lead people to encounter this love, so that only it “can transform the human heart.”
Finally, the Sacred Heart doctrine reinforces that love is not only individual. The Catechism teaches that charity forms an actual communion: “None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself,” and “Every sin harms this communion.” In charity, even “the least of our acts…redounds to the profit of all.”
This ecclesial dimension matters because devotion to the Sacred Heart is meant to integrate with the Church’s worship and life, not isolate the heart of the believer from the body of Christ. The Directory notes that devotional exercises connected with the Sacred Heart exist alongside the liturgical celebration, and it frames the devotion as a love and trust in Christ’s mercy “symbolized by his Heart.”
Taken together, the Sacred Heart doctrine informs Catholic teaching on love in five tightly linked ways:
In short: Catholic love is not only commanded; it is contemplated in Christ’s pierced Heart, received as mercy, and then expressed as charity—patient, enduring, and self-giving toward God and neighbor.
Sacred Heart doctrine grounds Catholic teaching on love in the merciful, incarnate love of Christ—a love that answers misunderstandings of God, calls believers to the lived perfection of charity, and extends neighbor-love even to enemies, all within the Church’s communion.