The Sacred Heart of the cosmos

Ian's use of the mandorla opens up so many possibilities. For Teilhard the Sacred Heart is a symbol of cosmic energies. Perhaps Christ could be set in a mandorla containing stars to signify the cosmic Christ-Omega. The point at which all things converge into the divine centre. This divine centre - the heart he holds out or points towards - calls to our human centre: Cor ad cor loquitor. His Heart, IS OUR future. The fire of his heart consuming and completing us. It is this 'cosmic sense' which is central to his belief in the Sacred Heart as a devotion for mankind now, and in the future. The Sacred Heart: the 'Diaphany of the Divine at the heart of a glowing Universe.. The divine radiating from the depths of blazing matter'. ( As he puts it in 'The Heart of the Matter') Christ in the icon has to be portrayed as the centre of a glowing and blazing universe! The love of God is active, alive, throbing and beating in the universe. That love is calling for our response. An idea expressed so perfectly by a phrase that Blessed John Henry Newman made his own: Heart speaks to Heart. It speaks lovingly over the vastness of time and space. It calls and it waits, for us to open our hearts.