June Prayer to the Sacred Heart (6): The cosmic Christ

It is in the Sacred Heart that the conjunction of the Divine and the cosmic takes place..There lies the power that, from the beginning, has attracted me and conquered me… All the later development of my interior life has been nothing other than the evolution of that seed. 1919 (cited in R. Faricy, All Things in Christ, Fontana, 1971; pp13-14)

This ‘seed’ continued to grow and evolve throughout his life. If we do not understand this seed of the Sacred Heart in his life and work we simply do not understand Teilhard. And, if we do not understand the central place of the Sacred Heart in his vision of the future of Christianity, we simply do not understand what Teilhard has to say to us in the 21st century. The Sacred Heart is the point at which all creation is converging: it is the personal heart of the cosmos. It is the centre of Christ and the centre of our centre - our heart – and the centre of all that is and will be. The Sacred Heart is the fire of love which beats and glows at the heart of creation and to which all is converging. The Sacred Heart is the Omega Point. It was - as he noted in 1939 - his mission in life to propagate this belief. (Faricy, p 17) All that he writes is ultimately about this mission to spread this seed, this ‘attraction’ to the Sacred Heart. (He did not like the word ‘devotion’ as it was, ’too sentimental’ and ‘ too weak’. ) Teilhard wished to spread an attraction to the universal, cosmic Christ: that is to the ‘true heart of Jesus’.

So , our prayer for today is part of an early prayer by Teilhard which encapsulates his mission to renew the Sacred Heart’s position in the life of the Church. It is to be found at the end of his first great statement of his ideas, ‘Cosmic Life’, completed in Easter 1916 in Dunkirk.


Let us pray:
Lord Jesus Christ, you truly contain within your gentleness, within your humanity, all the unyielding immensity and grandeur of the world. ... I love you as the source, the activating and life-giving ambience, the term and consummation, of the world, even of the natural world, and of its process of becoming.
You the Centre at which all things meet and which stretches out over all things so as to draw them back into itself: I love you for the extensions of your body and so to the farthest corners of creation through grace through life, and through matter.
Lord Jesus, you who are as gentle as the human heart as fiery as the forces of nature, as intimate as life itself you in whom I can melt away and with whom I must have mastery and freedom: I love you as a world, as this world which has captivated my heart ; — and it is you, now realize, that my brother-men, even those who do not believe, sense and seek throughout the magic immensities of the cosmos.
Lord Jesus, you are the centre towards which all things are moving: if it be possible, make a place for us all in the company of those elect and holy ones whom your loving care has liberated one by one from the chaos of our present existence and who now are being slowly incorporated into you in the unity of the new earth.
The Prayer of The Universe, Fontana, 1973; 103-4


Today we pray that this ‘seed’ of the Sacred Heart - as the cosmic Christ - will grow in our heart’s poor soil and attract and unite with our heart.

June prayers to the Sacred Heart (5): A prayer from St. John Eudes

This exploration of the Sacred Heart by reflecting on its artistic representation is like following a river to find its source only to discover that you are back where you started. For the more does one explore the image, the deeper we are pulled into prayer. It is as if we can only really find the source of the river by swimming in it. And then the source becomes more apparent: the Sacred Heart flows out of the very depths of the human experience of the self and the divine. And thus our journey to the Sacred Heart begins and returns again and again to the Holy Eucharist.

As we explore the Sacred Heart in prayer we realize that it calls and pulls us towards the very core of existence: what Teilhard called the ‘heart of matter’, the heart of the universe , and the heart of the divine and the heart of ourselves. In short, reflecting on the Sacred Heart and prayer to the Sacred Heart is powerful stuff. Teilhard believed passionately that it held the key to the ‘Christ of today’, as he expressed it to Jeanne Mortier. The Christianity of the future had to spread the good news of the Sacred Heart as ‘ the centre of energy that creates and drives the world’ ( Mortier, Album, p193). For this reason he was worried that the devotion that was practiced in his own time would fail to bring about this sense of the ‘cosmic’ scale of Christ. In his letter to his cousin who was about to go off to Paray le Monial in 1917, he is highly critically of the ‘mawkish’ images full of ‘false sentimentality’ and ‘excesses of false devotion’. Teilhard’s preference is for the Sacred Heart to become the ‘centre of an almost esoteric cult reserved for those who wish with all their hearts to be real Christians through and through’. (Making of a Mind, p192) In other words, the Sacred Heart was so deep and complex and powerful a mystery that it is wholly unsuited to be a popular – mass market - devotion fuelled by industrially produced cheap sentimental kitsch images. But, as he admits ‘ the mistake may be mine’. Was the mistake all his? I don’t think so. If the power of the Sacred Heart is to be harnessed by the Church it may be that it is a good thing that the devotion has suffered a decline or (to use a word favoured by Teilhard) diminishment. For Teilhard the dominant image was (As he notes later in The Heart of Matter ) ‘oddly limited both in the object to which it was directed (Reparations ) and in its symbol ( the heart of our Saviour, depicted with curious anatomical realism!). Thus a few years before his death he observes:

The remains of this narrow view can still, unfortunately, be seen today, both in a form of worship which is always obsessed by the idea of sin and in an iconography which we must needs deplore without too much vexation. For my own part, however, I can say that at no time has its influence held the least attraction for my piety. (Heart of Matter, 43)

The iconography of the Sacred Heart, in my experience to date, does get in the way of prayer. It has not been much help for me on this journey. But, like, Teilhard, that just might be to do with me: I may be wrong. Thus my exploration of the Sacred Heart has essentially involved prayer which is focused by words rather images. Where images have aided prayer they have - like the icons of the Virgin, and Pinta’s picture - helped me to focus on the heart of Jesus. I have also found that icons of the Annunciation, Transfiguration, Resurrection , Ascension and Pentecost can be powerfully evocative of the Sacred Heart. And, of course the Rosary is also indispensible for anyone on a journey to the Sacred Heart. But the Batoni type pictures , no. I have tried, but no they are not a great help. Where they do work is through a quick look and then close your eyes and imagine the image just morphing into something else - as Teilhard did. In this respect, I think that the simple drawing by St Margaret Mary has been far more effective as an aid to prayer: a kind of map to use on the journey. My reading of the history of the devotion suggests that, in this respect, I am more in tune with the devotion as it was prior to the age of kitsch ‘anatomical realism’.
Thus the prayer for today comes from St John Eudes. Many of his prayers are remarkably vivid and - for me - really capture Teilhard’s sense of the Sacred Heart and the sense of the cosmic Christ. His prayers can be immensely visual and seem to have the effect of inducing a clear mental picture. As in this prayer.

O furnace infinitely to be desired! Who will grant me to be plunged into that burning fire?
O Mother of Jesus, O all you angels and holy saints of Jesus, I give myself to you and to each in particular, and I give you also all my brothers and sisters in Christ, and all the inhabitants of earth, that you may cast us all into the abyss of that sacred furnace!

Attend and hear, O vast furnace of love!
A tiny straw asks most humbly and earnestly to be plunged, buried , lost, devoured and consumed wholly in your sacred flames and your holy fires forever and ever!

O fire which ever burns and is never extinguished.
O love which is ever fervent and never grows tepid, inflame me wholly that I may love you wholly.

Amen.

St John Eudes pray for us.

June Prayers to the Sacred Heart (4): Veni, Creator Spiritus

Prayer, of course can be sung. There are several popular hymns to the Sacred Heart, and I may blog about these. But there are many hymns which should be regarded as hymns about the Sacred Heart but generally are not considered as such – but they should be! One of the greatest is, of course , Veni Creator Spiritus.

Today is the Ascension of the Lord. And I am reminded of how it points towards Pentecost and the Feast of the Sacred Heart. In the Acts Jesus tells the apostles that in due course, after he has ascended to the Father, they will receive the power of the Holy Spirit. And it is therefore fitting that the prayer for today is this ancient and beautiful hymn. How sad that it is not heard today as much as it was in the past. The first and fourth verses also echo the words of St Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians (read at mass today) - which prays that God may give us a spirit of revelation’ and that the spirit will ‘open the eyes of our heart’. (Ephesians,1: 15-23. ) Although the reading at mass today went with ‘eyes of the mind’. But, the Latin vulgate ( as we are using a Latin hymn) translates the phrase ‘opening the eyes of your mind’ (verse 18) as ‘inluminatos oculos cordis vestri ut sciatis quae sit spes vocationis eius quae divitiae gloriae hereditatis eius in sanctis’ That is, enlightening the eyes of your hearts. Wisely, the parish priest went with ‘’eyes of your heart’ in his epistle . Which is much better!!
Teilhard would have warmed to Paul’s vision of the ‘fullness of him who fills all in all’. Taken together, the icon (above) and St Paul's epistle and the hymn Veni, Creator Spiritus give a beautiful focus for our prayer to the Sacred Heart this Ascension day.

Veni, Creator Spiritus, verses 1 and 4
(In the first verse in translation pectora (breast) is usually translated as ‘in our hearts take up thy rest’.)

Veni, Creator Spiritus,
mentes tuorum visita,
imple superna gratia
quae tu creasti pectora.

Come, Holy Spirit, Creator blest,
and in our hearts take up Thy rest;
come with Thy grace and heavenly aid
to fill the hearts which Thou hast made.

Accende lumen sensibus:
infunde amorem cordibus:
infirma nostri corporis
virtute firmans perpeti.

Kindle our sense from above,
and make our hearts o'erflow with love;
with patience firm and virtue high
the weakness of our flesh supply.


To listen to this music, go HERE

The icon above is, for me, so suggestive of the images illustrating Dante's vision, and has relevance to our Sacred Heart ( I think!)

June Prayers to the Sacred Heart (3) : Prayer before an Icon of St Paul

When we think about prayer and the Sacred Heart we naturally return to the role of images. Indeed, of all Catholic traditions, none place more emphasis on the importance of displaying an image than that of the Sacred Heart. ( Apart from the Divine Mercy.) Indeed, the ninth promise given to St Margaret Mary is that Christ will bless the places in which the image is exposed and honoured. Teilhard himself had a picture of the Sacred Heart on his desk: it was apparently the only piece of ‘pious’ art he possessed. The whole point of this project is to try and see the Sacred Heart in a different way – a way that seeks to capture what Teilhard believed the Sacred Heart symbolized. But to do that, I think we need other icons! In this regard I have always been fascinated by the Orthodox tradition of the ‘ikonstasis’, or icon corner. I first saw them in the homes of Greek friends and neighbours when I was growing up. And I think that Catholics and other Christians can learn so much from the ‘icon corner’. Perhaps an icon of the Sacred Heart should find a home within an ikonostasis? Because, in thinking about prayers to the Sacred Heart inspired by Teilhard one thing is clear to me more than any other: in addition to the icon of the Virgin, we also must turn to an icon of St Paul. The Virgin is important to Teilhard’s idea of the Sacred Heart because - as we saw in the blogs on the ‘Eternal Feminine’ – Mary points the way and leads on and up to Jesus. But for Teilhard, the Sacred Heart MUST also be viewed through the perspective or window (icon) of St. Paul. The Sacred Heart as Christ Omega is the Jesus we find in Paul’s letters. If we are to understand what Teilhard saw in the Sacred Heart – and furthermore WHY it was so crucial to the future of Christianity – we must look at the Sacred Heart through an icon of St Paul. When we do this, Teilhard’s vision of the Sacred Heart becomes much clearer. In simple terms prayer to the Sacred Heart should be inspired by St. Paul. That is really what Teilhard is saying.

A few days before he died, on Maunday Thursday 1955, he wrote down what he considered to be the essence of what he believed. It begins: ‘St. Paul – the three verses: En pasi panta Theos’. The three verses are 1. Corithians xv: 26, 27, and 28.’

In these verses we are asked to see the Sacred Heart as both personal and Cosmic. The universe has a loving heart that desires our love, so that we may be complete. This heart has given all for us, and invites us to respond.

26 The last enemy that will be abolished is death. 27 For he has put all things in subjection under his feet. But when He says, "All things are put in subjection," it is evident that He is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him. 28 When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.

When we pray to the Sacred Heart it must – from this Pauline perspective – be to pray for us to be united to Christ who is the very centre and heart of the Cosmos - of all things. We pray for the Parousia: when God will become all in all. The Sacred Heart pulls us towards this centre. We just have to open our hearts, as Jesus opens his. We have to lose our hearts to find ourselves in Christ. To pray is to adore. And to adore the Sacred Heart is, as Teilhard says:

to lose oneself in the unfathomable, to plunge into the inexhaustible, to find peace in the incorruptible, to be absorbed in defined immensity, to offer oneself to the fire and the transparency, to annihilate oneself in proportion as one becomes more deliberately conscious of oneself, and to give of one’s deepest to that whose depth has no end…

And thus our prayer for today joins with Teilhard in his Pauline vision.

Disperse, O Jesus, the clouds with your lightning! Show yourself to us as the Mighty, the Radiant, the Risen! Come to us once again as the Pantocrator who filled the solitude of the cupolas in the ancient Basilicas! Nothing less than this Parousia is needed to counter-balance and dominate in our hearts the glory of the world that is coming into view. And so we should triumph over the world with you, come to us clothed in the glory of the world.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu (London: Fontana 1964), pp. 127-9.

Amen.

June Prayers to the Sacred Heart (2) : St Paul's Prayer

Another first Friday. And, as it was the first Friday of June I think it is a very special day. The reading from The Acts of the Apostles today prompted me to reflect on a key aspect of Teilhard’s approach to the Sacred Heart: that it is wholly anchored in St Paul. If the devotion to the Sacred Heart that he shared with his mother and sister was one aspect of his thinking about the role of the Sacred Heart in the future of Christianity, another was unquestionably his great love of St. Paul’s letters. The Sacred Heart as the Omega point is entirely grounded in St. Paul. And so, the prayer that comes to mind today is – like his sister’s prayer – one which also meant so much to his devotion to the Sacred Heart. It is, of course, Paul’s prayer in Ephesians (3: 14-19)



I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that he may grant you in accord with the riches of his glory to be strengthened with the power through his Spirit in the inner self, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you rooted and grounded in love, may have the strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Teilhard believed that the Christianity of the future has to become more and more 'rooted and grounded' in the devotion to the Sacred Heart. Through our devotion to the Sacred Heart we pray that Christ will dwell in our hearts and that we may, as a result, be filled with the fullness of God. This prayer of St. Paul is at the heart of Teilhard’s devotion to the Sacred Heart. It should be at the heart of our devotion as well.

I pray that, through devotion to the Sacred Heart, we may all be strengthened by the Holy Spirt so as to become ever more rooted and grounded in love. And in this way, may humanity come to be filled by the fullness of God. May Christ come and dwell in our hearts.

June Prayers to the Sacred Heart (1) : Francoise Teilhard de Chardin's prayer

Françoise Teilhard de Chardin 1879-1911
It is appropriate to begin our June exploration of prayers to the Sacred Heart with Teilhard’s own family. His mother, Berthe-Adele and his sisters Marguerite-Marie and Françoise were devoted to the Sacred Heart – as was his cousin, Marguerite Teillard-Chambon. Françoise penned a prayer which I am sure he would have said often in her memory. And this is my ‘prayer for today’. It captures the intensity of the devotion which his mother must have inspired. And today I join with them in this prayer.


Heart of Jesus, give me a heart that is filled with ardor and generosity, that thrills with joy when sacrifices have to be made; a heart whose zeal knows neither fatigue nor obstacles; a heart whose only love is your heart, and whose only knowledge is your name.
Françoise Teilhard de Chardin

Françoise was Superior of the Convent of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Shanghai China. She died there of smallpox in 1911.

In a letter to his parents in June of that year, Teilhard writes:

Our greatest consolation, surely, is that it is difficult to imagine a holier or more beautiful end…Our Lord is giving her her reward before its time has come.: we have no right, even, to regret the good she would have done had her life been longer. The fine life is the life that fulfils God’s plans.
See Mortier and Aboux (eds) Teilhard de Chardin Album, Collins, London 1966. P 42

To cheer Françoise up when she was sad, Teilhard would tell her that she was ‘looking at the crucifix from the wrong side’. ( cited in Lukas and Lukas, Teilhard, Collins, 1977, p 242)

When we experience the inevitable pains and sadnesses of life, it is well to remember Teilhard’s advice to his dear sister.

June: the month of the Sacred Heart

Today is the 1st of June. And in London, it is ‘bursting out all over’! It is a beautifully sunny day. June is traditionally the month which is dedicated to the Sacred Heart. The feast of the Sacred Heart – which is a ‘solemnity’ in the Catholic Church - is celebrated on the Friday 19 days after Pentecost. So, this year it will actually be in July. ( The first of July - one of the latest I can recall.) This is therefore an important part of the journey towards a better understanding of the Sacred Heart. Over the next four weeks, therefore, I will blog a daily reflection on the devotion, and I think I will try to focus on the treasury of prayers which have been used over the years. I hope that these prayers will be a source of inspiration to Ian as he works on the icon in the weeks to come.

But before that I would like to just tidy up a few loose ends in relation to Teilhard and Dante because it raises a number of interesting issues. In simple terms, reading Dante from a Teilhardian perspective prompts us to see how central for both men was the role of love. For both it is the Love of God which fills and energises the whole of creation. Human history is a story which culminates in Christ becoming all in all. Indeed, this is why Dante called his great work a COMEDY. He uses this word in the ancient sense of a comedy as a drama which has a happy ending: order emerges from the apparent confusion and chaos. For Dante human history has a point and a purpose and at the close of the Divine Comedy he describes what that point and purpose is: our ultimate unity with the source of all love: God. So too, for Teilhard, evolution is not a tragic story: it is not meaningless and pointless. Teilhard’s vision is one of evolution as a divine comedy and not a tragedy! The story of evolution is the story of love. It has a point and purpose. What draws us on, as in Dante, is the energy - the gravitational / convergent pull - of love. Teilhard’s prayer is for humanity to be united to the centre – or heart – of creation. As in Dante, the only way in which humanity can be united to that sacred centre is by being open to the energy of love. When we read Dante we see what happens ( in the Inferno and in Purgatory) when human beings fail to harness that energy, and become driven by the love of self, rather than open to the love of God. At the end of the Divine Comedy Dante beholds the Trinity and sees at the centre of the centre the image of Christ. It helps us visualize what Teilhard saw in the Sacred Heart. As he put it in a letter to Lucile Swan in 1941, the (Pinta) image of the Sacred Heart is :’ a vague representation of the universal “foyer” of attraction which we are aiming for.’ Dante equally finds it impossible to give anything more than a vague or rough and inadequate description of what he imagined as with his poet’s eyes he looked into the heart of the Trinity, nothing less than: ‘l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle’. It is this love - a cosmic energy - that moves the sun and all the stars which Teilhard asks us to contemplate when we gaze upon an image of the Sacred Heart. This month, June, is the month when we must look upon that blazing fire of love and try to open ourselves to its power. It is the month of the Sacred Heart whose feast we will celebrate on the first of July in the light of Pentecost: when the Holy Spirit appeared as fire to the apostles.