What Does Love Look Like?

It’s a commonplace observation that most people think more readily in pictures than in abstract concepts, and that stories move and transform us in ways that logical arguments often don’t.  God, who of course knows this, therefore has revealed Himself to us, as C.S. Lewis put it, by writing Himself into a part in our story – at once author of the whole and character in the play, so to speak – and over the centuries, bequeathing to us a series of vivid images that, as the saying goes, are worth thousands of words.

Three of these images, or pictures, are closely related, even though great swaths of time separate the production of each by the Divine Artist.  The first and most ancient is the Crucifix, depicting the death of Christ on the Cross.  How odd that it adorns our churches, our homes, even our persons, symbol as it is of such tragic human inanity and brutality and a reminder of what we’re all capable of in our worst moments. 

And yet a reminder, too, of God’s willingness out of incomprehensible love to absorb all that the worst in us can dish out rather than use His infinite power to give us what we deserve.  What we have here, then, is a symbol of inexpressible love and mercy on God’s part and unconscionable sin on ours.  Can we learn more about God and human nature by contemplating the Crucifix than by reading dozens of theology and psychology books?

But God is also aware of our fathomless capacity to take even the best gifts for granted and to trivialize even things most sacred and profound, not to mention the variety of human temperaments that make one picture transformative for some, less for others. Many centuries after Christ was crucified, and with crucifixes being everywhere by then, Jesus appeared to a simple Visitation nun in 17th-century France.

What he revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque was the image of his Sacred Heart, ringed with thorns, cross-crowned, a gash, the result of the centurion’s spear, all aflame with love.  He answered the rigorism and gloom of the Jansenist heresy with a picture.  It told the same story as the Crucifix, and still does, but with a different emphasis, directing our attention even more clearly to Christ’s sacrifice as an act of love, taking pity on humanity’s waywardness and insensibility.

Our bishops just consecrated the United States to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in preparation for the 250^th Anniversary of our Founding.  If this leads to nothing but a renewal among our Catholic people of devotion to Jesus’ sacrificial Heart and our more faithfully living out the Two Great Commandments, the Church and the nation would surely be much better off.

I wonder if even our Protestant brothers and sisters might profit by adopting this visual reminder of our Lord’s love.  In some circles, they already seem less hostile than in the past to Catholic sacramentals, e.g., in the distribution of ashes at the beginning of Lent. Why not the Sacred Heart?  How could it hurt?

In between the two great wars of the 20th century, God painted a third picture revelatory of His love and mercy.  In 1931, the recipient of the revelation was a cloistered nun named Faustina Kowalska, subsequently canonized by Pope John Paul II, the first saint of the third millennium.  In fact, John Paul II was more than anyone else responsible for making St. Faustina’s Diary widely known – and for devotion to the Divine Mercy becoming one of the most popular Catholic devotions in the contemporary world.

There are five elements to it: the second Sunday of Easter as Divine Mercy Sunday, the Divine Mercy Novena, the Hour of Mercy (3 p.m., the hour Jesus died on the Cross), the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and the Divine Mercy Image. This last is the complement to the aforementioned images and the gentlest and subtlest in communicating the message of God’s love and solicitation toward us – and a reminder of our desperate need for His mercy.

Harsh wounds do not appear in the Divine Mercy Image, and the brutality that inflicted them on the Lord is only implied in a full-figure picture of Jesus pointing to His heart.  Two beams of light radiate out – one red, one white – representing the blood and water that flowed when the Roman soldier pierced Christ’s heart as he hung on the Cross, representing also the sacraments of baptism (the water) and the Eucharist (the blood) as well as the love and mercy of God falling on us in a heavenly shower.

Inundated as we are with a dispiriting 24/7 news cycle, an ocean of Internet pornography, and an endless barrage of advertising enticing us to bottomless pits of consumption, how salutary to be washed and refreshed in the rain of Divine Mercy by a picture painted by God Himself for His beloved children.

The Crucifixion happened 2000 years ago.  The resurrected Christ has seen to it that it remains with us in three vivid images: the most literal, the Crucifix itself; the second, the image of His wounded Sacred Heart; the third, a portrait of Himself pouring forth from that Heart what He will not keep to Himself, His infinite compassion and kindness, fathomless mercy, and love.

One or another of those images may have greater appeal for you depending on all sorts of factors.  Each speaks thousands of words, each word an expression of the Word that was from the beginning, that was with God, that was God, that became flesh and dwelt among us, a living picture of God, who is love.

May one or more of these images adorn and shape our hearts and our homes.  What better hope for our 250-year-old nation and our much older, though no wiser, world?