I recently visited the Louvre in Paris and began my tour in the Denon Wing. Ascending the wide steps that lead to the Niké of Samothrace, I took a right turn and made my way to the hall that features Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. She was surrounded by a mob of people, phones held high to capture the painting – she seemed amused.
Close by, and bereft of onlookers, hung a painting by Andrea Solario called The Madonna of the Green Cushion. At first sight, it is a beautiful portrait of Mary breastfeeding Jesus; the eyes are drawn to the shared gaze of mother and child. This is not a casual glance. Mary and Jesus are peering deeply into the centre of each other’s person – right into each other’s heart.
Solario’s painting came to mind as I read Pope Francis’s encyclical Dilexit Nos, in which the late pontiff explained the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Its essence is an intimate, heart-to-heart relationship with Christ. By “heart”, Pope Francis meant what many cultures have meant for millennia: the coordinating centre of a person, which directs the mind and will to the greater good (DN 5,13). As the deepest part of a person, the heart is where God speaks to the human being, and where the human being can respond to God. Indeed, the human heart, a person’s inmost being, bears the mark of having been created by God (Gaudium et Spes 18,19).
What the Devotion to the Sacred Heart and the maternal gaze of Mary have in common is the communion of hearts that results when two people are active in a relationship.
Mary’s relationship with Jesus begins at the Annunciation, but after the Nativity it develops as one would expect – in the daily moments of nursing. At first glance, there does not seem to be much happening beyond the giving of milk – which is not insignificant, since it provides nourishment for the child. But much more is going on.
Breastfeeding is also a bonding experience for mother and child. Researchers have found that nursing, and particularly eye-to-eye contact between mother and child, contributes to a child’s intellectual and emotional development. It seems that the gaze shared by mother and child assists the baby in organising brain processes, particularly in the areas that direct love, affection and social interaction.
The gaze between Mary and Jesus is vital to their relationship. The earliest encounters are filled with silence, but a deep communication happens nonetheless. The mother communicates silently through her gaze: “Even if no one else sees You, I see You and I love You. I give all that I am to You.” The child receives this communication by returning the gaze, trusting that the mother will continue to be there. They are, in truth, sharing their hearts – and slowly the child begins to know, at the level of the heart (for He cannot yet communicate it verbally), that He is a “Thou”: a person loved simply for being (DN 25).
Over the years, Mary and Jesus remain in a heart-to-heart relationship, but they also learn new ways to communicate. The child imitates the mother; He learns to speak, He enters new relationships. The mother guides the child, teaching Him to hear God’s voice and to say “yes” to His purposes.
In time, they come to understand that Jesus has a unique relationship with God – that He and God the Father are one. Jesus, in His humanity, comes to this knowledge earlier than Mary, but Mary – who will understand fully only after the Resurrection – realises that Jesus must complete His Father’s will (Luke 2:49-51). She says, “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5), and Jesus goes out on His public ministry: teaching, healing and spreading the word of God. Finally, He fulfils God’s plan of salvation by His death and Resurrection, and opens the way for all men and women back to God.
If we consider the Devotion to the Sacred Heart in light of the gaze shared by Jesus and Mary, we will see many shared qualities. This should not be surprising, given that Jesus, in His humanity, was formed by Mary. One important difference is that in the devotion, Jesus is the parent and we are the child. Pope Francis said that, through the devotion, Jesus “plumbs the depths of your heart and, knowing everything about you, fixes his gaze upon you” (DN 39). Our part is to return the compliment.
“What we contemplate and adore is the whole Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, represented by an image that accentuates His heart. That heart of flesh is seen as the privileged sign of the inmost being of the Incarnate Son and His love, both divine and human” (DN 48). Contemplating an image of the Sacred Heart will be fruitless, however, if we remain merely spectators. If we want to pray the devotion well, we have to become active participants.
Returning Jesus’s gaze includes hearing and obeying His words. If we do not understand, the response is not to turn away, but to continue to gaze at Him, asking for understanding. And as we grow in understanding – learning from Jesus what He calls us to – we must put it into action. St Gregory the Great said: “I assure you that it is not by faith that you will come to know [Jesus], but by love; not by mere conviction, but by action.”
The surest way to know if we are bearing fruit is by our love for others. Our devotion to Jesus needs to be combined with “communal missionary commitment” (DN 91), so that gazing at “the pierced heart of the Lord… we too are inspired to be more attentive to the sufferings and needs of others, and confirmed in our efforts to share in His work of liberation as instruments for the spread of His love” (DN 171).
Just as the gaze shared by Mary and Jesus throughout their lives prepared Jesus for His mission as Saviour, the gaze we share with Jesus forms us into His disciples and readies us to return to God, the source of our being. Not everyone recognises “this intimate and vital link with God, [and some] have explicitly rejected it” (Gaudium et Spes 19). Certainly sin and evil have obscured the truth of who we are, but God did not want us to remain in darkness. He gave us Jesus, with whom we can have a relationship because Mary cooperated with God.
The beauty of Jesus and Mary’s relationship – so lovingly depicted in Dilexit Nos and Solario’s painting – is that they have never ceased to gaze at each other, and yet at the same time they have never ceased to care for others, either. May we enter the heart of Christ so that, with Him and in Him, we too can give our hearts to all.
