Cardinal Tobin: The eternal Son of God loves each of us with a human heart
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Vol. 7. No. 22
My dear sisters and brothers in Christ,
Today, June 12, is the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is also the World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests.
During the past year, Pope Leo XIV has emphasized devotion to the Sacred Heart as a source of compassion, mercy, and renewal for a suffering world. A year ago, he released a new prayer to the Sacred Heart (see below), encouraging the faithful to seek Christ in daily life and urging priests to conform their hearts to the Good Shepherd.
Established in 2002 by Pope Saint John Paul II, the World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests is celebrated annually on the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Its purpose is to encourage priests to reflect on their vocation and to ask the faithful to pray for their priests’ holiness and fidelity.
The prayer introduced by Pope Leo XIV last year asks priests and members of the lay faithful to ask for the grace to encounter Christ in their prayer, work, and daily routine. The prayer’s focus is on compassion, and it highlights the “tender heart” of Jesus, pouring compassion on the poor, suffering, and all who experience human miseries.
In his June 27, 2025, address, Pope Leo called on priests to “immerse their baptismal and priestly garments once more in the heart of the Savior,” placing the Eucharist and charity at the center of their ministry. He stressed that the Sacred Heart is a refuge in a world marked by wars and technological changes that threaten humanity. Devotion to the Sacred Heart is linked to a “mission of compassion for the world,” and although our priests are asked to play a leading role in this “mission of compassion,” all baptized Christians share in the responsibility to bring the tender heart of Jesus to the whole world.
Yesterday, June 11, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) consecrated the United States of America to the Sacred Heart of Jesus to mark our nation’s 250th anniversary. This act of consecration, aimed at fostering spiritual renewal, took place during a Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. D.C. With this solemn consecration, we seek to place our country under the care of Jesus’s merciful love at all times, but especially during this landmark anniversary year.
Pope Leo has noted the work of his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who in 1899 wrote Annum Sacrum (On Consecration to the Sacred Heart) “to foster and bring out into fuller light that most excellent form of devotion which has for its object the veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.”
In his 2024 Encyclical Dilexit Nos, On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ (see selection below), Pope Francis writes:
The eternal Son of God, in his utter transcendence, chose to love each of us with a human heart. His human emotions became the sacrament of that infinite and endless love.
It is this human heart of Jesus, the eternal Son of God, that we encounter in true devotion to His Most Sacred Heart.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is centered on the love of Christ made visible in His Heart, especially as revealed in the Eucharist and in His self-gift on the Cross. Prayers to the Sacred Heart are especially valuable during Eucharistic adoration because they help us grow in trust in the Lord, hope in salvation, and charity towards all our sisters and brothers in Christ.
This devotion is not just about emotion (how we feel); it is about our commitment to imitating Jesus’ unconditional love and allowing that love to transform us, His missionary disciples. The Holy Eucharist is presented as the place where Christ gives His whole self: “This is my whole self given up for you,” (Lk 22:19) which is Jesus’ definition of self-sacrificing love. The result is peace, transformation, and unity with Christ and with others in the Church, the Mystical Body of our Lord.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is closely tied to Eucharistic adoration because Christ’s Heart is understood to be the source of the divine love made present in this great Sacrament. Prayer before, during, and after the Eucharist can deepen calm, hope, and consolation. In addition, Christ’s presence in the Eucharist helps form souls in meekness and humility of heart.
This devotion has a profound spiritual purpose: it helps us to imitate Jesus, and it connects our devotion to Christ with the graces of being “meek and humble of heart,” strengthening virtue, and growing in charity.
So, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus means: contemplating Christ’s loving Heart, honoring His total self-gift, praying with trust and love, seeking transformation into His humility and charity, and drawing especially close to Him in the Eucharist and in works of charity. A simple way to practice devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is to pray with the intention of trusting Him more, loving Him more, and becoming more like Him in humility and charity.
Now that we have consecrated our country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, let’s pray that we will be inspired as individuals and as a nation, to be His witnesses in all that we say and do. May He “set our hearts ablaze” and help us to “pour out compassion on the little ones and the poor, on those who suffer, and on all human miseries.”
Sincerely yours in Christ the Redeemer,
Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R.
Archbishop of Newark
On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ
The eternal Son of God, in his utter transcendence, chose to love each of us with a human heart. His human emotions became the sacrament of that infinite and endless love. His heart, then, is not merely a symbol for some disembodied spiritual truth. In gazing upon the Lord’s heart, we contemplate a physical reality, his human flesh, which enables him to possess genuine human emotions and feelings, like ourselves, albeit fully transformed by his divine love. Our devotion must ascend to the infinite love of the Person of the Son of God, yet we need to keep in mind that his divine love is inseparable from his human love. The image of his heart of flesh helps us to do precisely this….
When we plunge into the depths of his heart, we find ourselves overwhelmed by the immense glory of his infinite love as the eternal Son, which we can no longer separate from his human love. It is precisely in his human love, and not apart from it, that we encounter his divine love: we discover “the infinite in the finite.”
It is the constant and unequivocal teaching of the Church that our worship of Christ’s person is undivided, inseparably embracing both his divine and his human natures. From ancient times, the Church has taught that we are to “adore one and the same Christ, the Son of God and of man, consisting of and in two inseparable and undivided natures”. And we do so “with one act of adoration… inasmuch as the Word became flesh”. Christ is in no way “worshipped in two natures, whereby two acts of worship are introduced”; instead, we venerate “by one act of worship God the Word made flesh, together with his own flesh”.
Saint John of the Cross sought to explain that in mystical experience the infinite love of the risen Christ is not perceived as alien to our lives. The infinite in some way “condescends” to enable us, through the open heart of Christ, to experience an encounter of truly reciprocal love, for “it is indeed credible that a bird of lowly flight can capture the royal eagle of the heights, if this eagle descends with the desire of being captured”. He also explains that the Bridegroom, “beholding that the bride is wounded with love for him, because of her moan he too is wounded with love for her. Among lovers, the wound of one is the wound of both”. John of the Cross regards the image of Christ’s pierced side as an invitation to full union with the Lord. Christ is the wounded stag, wounded when we fail to let ourselves be touched by his love, who descends to the streams of water to quench his thirst and is comforted whenever we turn to him…
(From the Encyclical of Pope Francis, Dilexit Nos, On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ, #60, 65-70.)
A Message from Pope Leo XIV: In the One Christ, We are One
In the solemn Mass inaugurating my Pontificate, I voiced before the People of God my great desire for “a united Church, a sign of unity and communion, which becomes a leaven for a reconciled world” (18 May 2025). Today, I share this desire once more with all of you. Reconciled with one another, united and transformed by the love that flows abundantly from the Heart of Christ, let us walk together humbly and resolutely in his footsteps, firm in faith and open to all in charity. Let us bring the peace of the risen Lord to our world, with the freedom born of the knowledge that we have been loved, chosen and sent by the Father….
I would like to say a word to you, dear Ordinands, who in a few moments, by the laying on of hands of the bishop and a renewed outpouring of the Holy Spirit, will become priests. What I have to say is simple, but I consider it important for your future and for the future of the souls entrusted to your care.
Love God and your brothers and sisters and give yourselves to them generously. Be fervent in your celebration of the sacraments, in prayer, especially in adoration before the Eucharist, and in your ministry. Keep close to your flock, give freely of your time and energy to everyone, without reserve and without partiality, as the pierced side of the crucified Jesus and the example of the saints teach us to do. Remember that the Church, in the two thousand years of her history, has had – and today continues to have – wonderful examples of priestly holiness. From the earliest communities on, the Church has raised up priests who have been martyrs, tireless apostles, missionaries, and champions of charity. Cherish this treasure: learn their stories, study their lives and work, imitate their virtues, be inspired by their zeal, and invoke their intercession often and insistently!
All too often, today’s world offers models of success and prestige that are dubious and short-lived. Do not let yourselves be taken in by them! Look rather to the solid example and apostolic fruitfulness, frequently hidden and unassuming, of those who, with faith and dedication, have spent their lives in service of the Lord and their brothers and sisters. Keep their memory alive by your own example of fidelity.
Let us now entrust ourselves to the loving protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of priests and Mother of hope. May she direct and sustain our steps, so that each day we may conform our hearts more closely to that of Christ, the supreme and eternal Shepherd.
(A selection from the homily of Pope Leo XIV on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests, June 27, 2025.)
My Prayer for You
Please join me in praying this devotional prayer of Pope Leo XIV to the Sacred Heart of Jesus:
Lord, I come to your tender heart today,
to you who have words that set my heart ablaze,
to you who pour out compassion on the little ones and the poor,
on those who suffer, and on all human miseries.
I desire to know you more, to contemplate you in the Gospel,
to be with you and learn from you
and from the charity with which you allowed yourself
to be touched by all forms of poverty.
You showed us the Father’s love by loving us without measure
with your divine and human heart.
Grant all your children the grace of encountering you.
Change, shape, and transform our plans,
so that we seek only you in every circumstance:
in prayer, in work, in encounters, and in our daily routine.
From this encounter, send us out on mission,
a mission of compassion for the world
in which you are the source from which all consolation flows.
Amen.