148: How Can We Enter Into The Sacred Heart?

The Son Reveals the Trinity

The love of the Father for each one of us was so great that He sent his Eternal Son to us (John 3:26), caused Him to become incarnate and, in Him and through Him, the Father opened wide the Gate of the Trinity to each one of us. The Trinity is in fact our true Home.

What, then, is the process through which we enter into the Trinity? God accomplishes this process in a very specific way: through Baptism we are grafted onto the Son, invited into the presence and the embrace of the Father, and become part of their everlasting reciprocal Love which is the Holy Spirit. The Son Incarnate, in fact, is our true Temple, where we can meet the Father in the Holy Spirit.

So true is this that it impacts significantly on worship. This is why we always pray to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. This is why the Priest summing up all worship says: Through the Son, with the Son and in the Son, in the Unity of the Holy Spirit, we give you all Glory and Honour. This also shapes the way we say the “Our Father”: we are in the Son, in the presence of the Father, talking to Him, through the Holy Spirit. It is only because we have been grafted onto the Son that we can say: “Our Father”; this is why the Father then distinguishes/hears in the sound of our prayer the very Voice of his Son and answers our prayers. We are, in a very real sense, in the Son who is God, worshiping, knowing and loving the Father who is God, and praying it in the Holy Spirit who is God, that is, praying it in a divine way. So clearly the Trinity is like a closed circuit. Nobody deals directly with the Father unless he or she is grafted onto the Son. This is an important part of the Revelation which the Son Incarnate came to bring us.

This revelation is stunning if we take an in-depth look. This is the reason for the Son saying to us that through his Passion He is going to prepare for each one of us, in Him our True Temple, a place (John 14:1-3). This is why the Son says that He is the “Gate”. Indeed He is the entrance Gate to the Trinity, our Home, our resting place (our Sabbath). This is why He says that He is the “Way” that leads to the Father.

Entering into the Life of the Trinity

The Lord himself gives us clues about the life of the Trinity, showing us that only God is God, and that one has to be truly “in God” in order to know God and love God. Psalm 36:9 in fact reflects this, saying: “(Father) In your Light (that is, the Son) we see the Light (that is, Yours)”. In the Gospel the Lord mentions this “closed circuit” flow of the Divine Life: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Mt 11:27)

Now, if “only the Father knows the Son”, how then can we ever access the Sacred Heart of the Son and know Him? How can we enter into the Son’s Sacred Heart? The answer to these questions is clear: the Father Himself needs to reveal the Heart of His Son to us. To accomplish this the Father needs to give us a unique gift, an exceptional capacity: enabling us to embrace the Son, in fact, to be at his level. For the new Wine (Jesus’ Heart) we need a new Skin, that is, a new capacity to embrace Him. We need to be lifted up to the Spirit world from the flesh, in order to be at God’s level and worship Him “in Spirit”.

Knowing the Father now becomes possible if the Son reveals Him. The text above says “no one knows the Son except the Father”, and except “… those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”. This certainly applies as well to the knowledge one can have about the Son (since the Son and the Father are one). Moreover, the knowledge acquired concerning the Son is given by the personal free choice of the Son. So it can be said that: Only the Father - and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal himself - do know the Son.

How the Son Reveals Himself

Now, how did the Son reveal himself to us? How did the Father present the Son to us? How did He make the Son known to us? In order to answer these questions in a satisfactory manner we need to explore an important point of our faith: Mary’s place in this process.

Mary is the New Eve

The Scriptures (1 Co 15:45; Romans 5:12-14) and the early Apostolic Fathers (St Irenaeus) see in Jesus the “New Adam”. This means that by the Grace of the Holy Spirit they were able to re-read the first chapters of the book of Genesis, seeing through the text, through the first Adam, to the New Adam, Jesus. So, suddenly, a text that seemed to talk to us only about the first Adam, starts to speak to us about Jesus the New Adam, revealing to us new depths that help us enter very deeply into the Mystery of God, of Jesus and of his relationship with Mary and with the Church.

Reading the Scriptures this way tells us that there is a unique relationship between the Son (the New Adam) and the New Eve. When the New Adam sees the New Eve, He can confidently affirm: “At last, she is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh” (Gn 2). We can also say that He recognises that her heart is born from his Heart on the Cross. In fact Mary is the first Redeemed person. Plus, as we will see it, she is the Mother of all the Redeemed. As all the Redeemed come forth from the side of Jesus on the Cross, it follows that Mary, the Mother of Christ, will be the first to come forth from his Side. She is the Mother of the Church, therefore She takes precedence over everyone and subsequently generates the actual Church.

Eve's creation

When Jesus, the New Adam, contemplates Mary, He states that She is truly the sole and unique “helper” for Him who is “similar to him” (see in Gn 2 the characteristics of Eve).

“And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.” (Gn 2:28)

Two characteristics are sought: “an help” and “meet for him”. But nobody, no anima, and for us, no “just man” on earth can be “of a help” and “meet” for Him. We are all sinners, separated from God, after the First Adam’s fall. Just as with the First Adam no “helpmeet” similar to him was found, so too for God no “helpmeet” similar to Him could be found after the Fall other than in the New Eve: “But for man there was not found an help meet for him.” (Gn 2:20)

By contrast Mary knows Him perfectly, She loves Him perfectly because from Him she is taken (Gn 2: she will be called “woman” because she is taken from “man”); she is “bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh”, therefore there is a deep similarity between them stemming from the fact that she is “made of him”, “of one of his ribs”. Her similar flesh can understand his flesh, Her similar bone can understand his bones, “flesh” and “bone” being a concrete image indicating that they are of the same “make”.

As a consequence, only Mary’s Heart can perfectly honour the Heart of Jesus, because this heart is issuing from the Heart of Jesus on the Cross. This very deep Mystery encompasses the fact that Her heart is born from his heart/side, is similar to his heart, and is capable of containing/embracing his heart.

Having Children from God

But Mary is the New Eve, the “mother of the new creation” the mother of the new living in God, the Redeemed, for like Eve “She will be called Eve because she is the mother of the living”. This significant connection between the Old and New Testaments is summed up by “Living” and “Eve” being words of the same root in Hebrew. Thus the heart within her children will resemble Her heart. It will be, in truth, “flesh of her flesh”.

When the Holy Spirit says in Ezekiel: “I will remove the heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh” (Ez 36) let us remember that this heart “of flesh” is of the same flesh as Mary, who is of the same flesh as Jesus!

Added to this, when Mary generates in us the Life of God, Jesus’ Life, we can say that, in an indefinable way, we are given a heart like hers, an immaculate heart. Our heart, then, is conceived in her heart, through the workings of the Holy Spirit. If we prefer, however, we can say that “Mary’s Heart is given to us”, so that we can love Jesus with her Heart: “I will remove the heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh” that is Mary’s Heart now realised in us.

The deep mystery of the Eucharist now takes up this theme when we hear the words: “Take this and eat it,” “this” being “flesh of my flesh”! He who eats my flesh will have Life (see John 6:53). Significantly the word “flesh” is used here and not “body”.

Thus, when on the Cross the side of Jesus was opened, the Fathers of the Church saw there the birth of the New Eve from the New Adam’s pierced side: “Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.” (John 19:34) The First heart that issues forth from the side of Jesus on the Cross is Mary’s Heart.

Then too, when the Fathers of the Church meditated upon the following verses they saw in them a Great Mystery: they saw Jesus, the New Adam, “sleeping” on the Cross, and having his side opened, and the New Eve coming out of it:

“And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof: the rib, which the LORD God had taken from the man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And the man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” (Gn 2:21-23)

This is a great Mystery, the mystery of the unique relationship that exists between Jesus and Mary. He knows her perfectly and more importantly she knows him perfectly.

God built (Gn 2:22 “built” and not “made”) Mary’s Heart from Jesus’ Heart on the Cross. Only the Father and She perfectly know the heart of Jesus. Her Heart alone, till now, has been capable of containing the One whom the heavens cannot contain (see 1 Kings 8:27). The “New Skin” only can contain the Divine Heart.

Like the Mother she is, Mary then begs Him to share the capacity of the New Skin, the New Eve, with others: “Give me children or I will die” (Gn 30:1), “They don’t have wine” (John 2). She wants to have children who will be capable like Her and with Her to contain His Heart and love Him in the same way she does. Children whose heart is “flesh of her flesh”, true children of hers.

Jesus, in turn, reveals Her to us by calling her “Woman” (John 2), which means: you are the “New Eve”, the Mother of His Children. When Jesus says “Woman” He alludes to that closed Mystery, that “secluded..sealed....locked Garden” (Mary, see Song of Songs 4:12), to “what is between you and me” (John 2)! What is between Him and Her is the central Mystery for us to meditate and ponder upon throughout the entire course of our lives. It is the entrance Gate to that knowledge of the Son that the Father (and Mary) alone have. By saying “Woman” Jesus, the New Adam, reveals the secret between Him and Her, the entrance door to the sealed circulation of Divine Life occurring between them.

The heart of this New Eve, is not only Immaculate, but it is important to recognise that it is also “immaculate” from the first moment of her Conception when she was saved from Original Sin. However, if we really go back to the true place of birth of her Immaculate Heart, we must necessarily go back to the moment when Jesus' heart was pierced on the Cross. She is Redeemed/Saved by Jesus being the first creature to come out of his pierced Side on the Cross. This is her birthplace, as it is ours. Immediately following this, we can affirm that her Heart is the birthplace of our heart. Psalm 87 beautifully sums this deep action up by saying about Mary: “all are born in Sion”... “in you all my fountains”.

The Church can only be the Church of Christ if she reflects the image and likeness of Mary, that is, if she offers her Spouse a pure faith (Virgin) and generates children by God and from God (Mother).