Pope Francis’ encyclical “Dilexit nos”

Rome (Italy). On 24 October 2024, the fourth Encyclical of Pope Francis “Dilexit nos” on the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus Christ was published, presented with a Press conference at the Vatican Press Office by Msgr. Bruno Forte, Theologian, Archbishop of Chieti-Vasto (Italy), and Sister Antonella Fraccaro, General Responsible for the Disciples of the Gospel.

‘He loved us’, says Saint Paul referring to Christ (Rom 8:37), to make us discover that nothing “can ever separate us” from this love. This is the beginning of the Encyclical followed at n.2 by the explanation of the Holy Father. “Yet living as we do in an age of superficiality, rushing frenetically from one thing to another without really knowing why, and ending up as insatiable consumers and slaves to the mechanisms of a market unconcerned about the deeper meaning of our lives, all of us need to rediscover the importance of the heart.”

The Encyclical Letter “is born from the spiritual experience of Pope Francis, who feels the drama of the enormous suffering produced by wars and so much ongoing violence. He wants to make himself close to those who suffer by proposing the message of divine love that comes to save us,” explains Msgr. Bruno Forte.

And it is the Pope himself who, in his conclusions, offers the key to reading his entire Magisterium:

The present document can help us see that the teaching of the social Encyclicals Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti is not unrelated to our encounter with the love of Jesus Christ. For it is by drinking of that same love that we become capable of forging bonds of fraternity, of recognizing the dignity of each human being, and of working together to care for our common home. (n. 217)

The symbol of the heart, is the object of the 1^st Chapter. For its writing, Bergoglio reveals to have been inspired by unpublished writings of his friend Father Diego Fares, SJ, whom he himself had welcomed into the Society of Jesus. In a society where forms of religiosity are multiplied and in Christianity itself, which sometimes lacks the personal reference to a God of love, the Pope invites us to “return to the heart” that configures in one’s own spiritual identity and puts us in communion with other people. To the heart that “unites the fragments”, and that helps to “unify and harmonize one’s personal history, which seems fragmented into a thousand pieces,” like Mary who kept everything in her heart, even what she did not understand.

Far from relying too much on oneself, however, the Heart of Christ is the true center. The heart of Christ is ‘ecstasy’, openness, gift, and encounter. In that heart, we learn to relate to one another in wholesome and happy ways, and to build up in this world God’s kingdom of love and justice. Our hearts, united with the heart of Christ, are capable of working this social miracle.” (n. 28).

We need the help of God’s love. Let us turn, then, to the Heart of Christ, that core of his being, which is a blazing furnace of divine and human love and the most sublime fulfilment to which humanity can aspire. There, in that Heart, we truly come at last to know ourselves and we learn how to love.” (n. 30)

At Chap. 3, the Encyclical also offers significant insights and current events regarding, for example, devotion to the Sacred Heart, but also the danger of dualisms such as Jansenism, still in some ways present, and to that “I would add that the heart of Christ also frees us from another kind of dualism found in communities and pastors excessively caught up in external activities, structural reforms that have little to do with the Gospel, obsessive reorganization plans, worldly projects, secular ways of thinking and mandatory programs. The result is often a Christianity stripped of the tender consolations of faith, the joy of serving others, the fervor of personal commitment to mission, the beauty of knowing Christ and the profound gratitude born of the friendship He offers and the ultimate meaning He gives to our lives.” (n. 88) devotion to the Sacred Heart helps us to put love at the center of everything.

In Chapter 4 – A Love that Gives Itself as Drink – we start from the testimony of Sacred Scripture and of the Christianity of the origins, to continue with the great Saints who have opened and walked the way of “devotion to the Sacred Heart as a place of personal encounter with the Lord” (n. 103): Saint Augustine, Saint Bonaventure, Saint Francis of Sales, Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, Saint Claudius of the Colombiere, Saint Ignatius of Loyola. And also: Saint Charles de Foucauld, Saint Teresa of Lisieux, up to the more recent Saint Vincent de Paul, Saint Pio da Pietrelcina, Saint Teresa of Calcutta, Saint Faustina Kowalska, and Saint John Paul II, who also offered “us a clear response that can guide Christians today towards a spirit of reparation more closely attuned to the Gospels.” (n. 181).

Dilexit nos therefore presents itself as an intense and profound text, which goes “to the heart” of faith, but also of current reality, as well expressed by Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Dicastery for Communication of the Holy See:

“We must avoid the risk of considering Pope Francis’ new encyclical a devotional text. On the contrary, it is an encyclical that enters into reality, into what the world lives, and offers a fundamental interpretative key to understand the magisterium of Francis and the origin of his interventions on social issues: from attention to the poor to migrants, to merciful closeness to everyone. Dilexit nos invites us to understand the heart of Jesus, that is, the way in which Jesus loves us, calls us, and wants to be close to us in every circumstance of life. By understanding the centrality of the heart of Jesus, we understand the importance of our heart, which is what distinguishes us, configures us, and puts us in communion with other people.”

This new Encyclical also nourishes the deepening of a theme that accompanied the Salesian Family in the year 2022 with the Comment to the Strenna of the Rector Major, Fr. Ángel Fernández Artime “Do all for love, nothing by force” in the fourth centenary of the death of Saint Francis of Sales, and on which Mother Chiara Cazzuola dwelled in Circular n° 1039 -In the Heart of Christ to live and proclaim His love – in which she affirmed: “Contemplation of the Heart of Christ reminds us that the trustful sequela, lived with daily fidelity, makes us serene women, capable of sowing around us gestures of tenderness, peace, and true charity.”