“The heart participates more strongly with what is happening in the depths of the soul, because the connection between body and soul is felt more clearly than any other part” (Edith Stein).
The heart is considered by many diverse cultures and religions as a symbol of spirituality, emotion, and the inherent morality of the human being. It is the center of feelings, love and compassion.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the undisputed symbol of the love of the Lord. This is a focus of Catholic worship, and above all, of Dehonian spirituality, for which Fr. Dehon gave of himself in life and in death.
It is precisely starting from this devotion to the Heart of Christ that the superior general of the Dehonians wanted to go beyond the image of the heart as a source of love, and dwell on the “wounded” heart as an image of suffering, of compassion, choosing precisely this icon of the “Wounded Heart” as a symbol to give depth to an aspect of consolation that is typically Dehonian, announcing the “Year of the Wounded Heart” that will begin on March 14th – the 175th anniversary of the birth of Fr. Dehon – and will end with the Feast of the Sacred Heart of 2019.
If it is in the heart that our most vivid, deepest feelings take consistency, make themselves perceptible, we then find in the wounded heart the harbor for the strongest pain, in which missed desires, expectations, frustrations and sufferings of men and women are revealed. A wounded heart is a bleeding heart, which suffers, and thanks to this suffering, is brought close to those who suffer like him.
In this year dedicated to the wounded heart of Christ, we want to try to bring attention to those who suffer, are persecuted, are suffering for a variety of reasons; knowing that their suffering is the suffering of Christ and that in the Heart of Christ they can find consolation.
