The Heart of Jesus

In June 2002, Pope John Paul II, before he prayed the Angelus with the faithful in St. Peter's Square, explained the devotion to the Sacred Heart as follows:

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

The month of June is singled out, in a particular way, for devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. To celebrate the Heart of Christ means to turn toward the profound centre of the Person of the Saviour, that centre which the Bible identifies precisely as his Heart, seat of the love that has redeemed the world.

If the human heart represents an unfathomable mystery that only God knows, how much more sublime is the heart of Jesus, in which the life of the Word itself beats. In it, as suggested by the beautiful Litanies of the Sacred Heart that echo the Scriptures, are found all the treasures of wisdom and science and all the fullness of divinity.

In order to save man, victim of his own disobedience, God wished to give him a "new heart," faithful to his will of love (see Jeremiah 31:33; Ezekiel 36:26; Psalm 50[51]:12). This heart is the heart of Christ, the masterpiece of the Holy Spirit, which began to beat in the virginal womb of Mary and was pierced by the lance on the cross, thus becoming for all the inexhaustible source of eternal life. That Heart is now the pledge of hope for every man . . .