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Quotes taken from "Heart Speaks to Heart", A Pastoral Letter on the Sacred Heart of Jesus by Cardinal Thomas Collins.

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To give us the guidance and strength required to fulfill our mission as disciples of Jesus more effectively, in a world so much in need of his love, we also need to rediscover a treasure, central to our life in Christ, that is hidden in plain sight in our Catholic spiritual heritage. It seems ever more clear to me that especially in these days we would all do well to focus intently on the symbol of the compassionate love of Christ: the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
The heart is a natural sign of true love: it is hidden, it is steady, and it is reliable. As it beats, moment by moment, day by day, year by year, it keeps us alive. That is true love, not the sentiment that deceives, nor the passing infatuation that blows away like a cloud. That is the Sacred Heart of Jesus, steady and true, and that is what we must take to heart. Our life of Christian discipleship must be guided by the profound vision of love represented by the Sacred Heart.
The Sacred Heart is a powerful symbol of the love of Jesus, which each of us was commissioned to make present in this world on the day we were baptised. More than ever before, our fractious world now needs the love symbolized by the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart leads us to ponder the sacred humanity of Jesus, God with us. Using the universally accepted symbol of the heart as the sign of the center of who we are, this devotion focuses on Jesus as the man for others, who showed humans how, in a human way, to love as God loves, and to act as God wants us to act.
Meditation upon the loving humanity of Jesus represented by the Sacred Heart, leads each of us to become more on fire for the Lord, to become not a superficial Christian, but a devoted Christian, a dedicated Christian, an intentional Christian committed to living out our baptismal mission to bring Christ into the world.
In devotion to the Sacred Heart, intellect, affectivity and will are harmoniously joined: head, heart, and hands. The Sacred Heart symbolizes the personal love of Jesus for each of us, and we respond with an intense personal love for Jesus, and a commitment to show to others by our actions the love Jesus shows to us.
We need to know Jesus, personally, and deep in our hearts. Focusing on the Sacred Heart leads us to the very heart of who Jesus is, the divine person who took on our humanity, who journeys with us, who meets us on the road, as he did with the discouraged disciples on the road to Emmaus.
The Sacred Heart is the sign of a love that reaches out, in the interdependence of relationship with others, not the sterile independence of autonomy. We find life and joy and the meaning of who we are not in icy isolation, or proud autonomy, or independence, but in the inter-relationship that is ultimately found in the Trinity and is made visible in the sacrificial love of Jesus represented by the Sacred Heart.
The Sacred Heart is the sign of the generous, warmly affectionate and sacrificial love that we encounter in Jesus in the Gospel. In the secular desert of autonomy, with joy we will draw water from that well of salvation.
The symbol of the Sacred Heart, of the compassionate love of Jesus, reminds us that we need to have a humane personal warmth at the center of who we are, a sensitivity which shapes how we relate to ourselves, and to God, and to those around us. We are not meant to operate only with the cold objective clarity of the intellect and the rough power of the will.
The Sacred Heart, because it arises out of the love of Jesus on Good Friday, shows us true love, not a sentimental substitute. Sentimental affection, disconnected from faith, reason, and the commitment to act rightly, is always an illusion and is often destructive.
It is sometimes thought that devotion to the Sacred Heart can be rather individualistic – nothing but a personal relationship between me and Jesus. But that is the opposite of the spirituality of the Sacred Heart. We see in Jesus a love for his heavenly Father that moves outward in this world to the love of neighbour.
Friday is the day of the Sacred Heart. The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart is always celebrated on a Friday, because Good Friday is the day of the crucifixion, and that is where the love of Jesus in the Sacred Heart is revealed. It is celebrated on the Friday that follows the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, because personal prayer to Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist is an essential element of the devotion of the Sacred Heart. Both celebrate the human encounter with the love of Jesus on the Cross: in the Sacred Heart, and in the continuing sacramental presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.
May our daily meditation on the Passion of the Christ, and on its symbolic representation in the sign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, bring us home to the heavenly Jerusalem through the perils of this valley of tears, and lead us to imitate Our Lord, in sharing his true love with each person whom we encounter on our journey.
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