I am surely not the only child who was stressed to see Catholic calendars displaying images of Jesus adorned with an anatomically explicit, occasionally bleeding, heart. Several of my aged aunts had these proudly displayed throughout their homes and whenever I went to visit, I always found myself disconcertingly intrigued, but shocked, as well, at the image. 

The metaphoric elements of the painting were somewhat lost on me in those early days. It wasn’t until many years later, miserably participating in a biology dissection class, that I first realized how impossibly different actual hearts were from the stylized, at times playful, renderings of the human heart that adorn cards, memes and so much more. None, as far as I could tell, had barbed wire thorns wrapped around them either.

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It was later still that I began to wonder why the human heart was even associated with love, feelings or indeed any emotion at all. My unscientific explanation was that, at times of extreme sadness, I often felt a tug in my chest and I extrapolated from there that this is why the connection was made. Not only that, but it’s an association that is millennia old. 

Sapho’s famous poems of the seventh-century B.C. speak of a heart aching for love. The Romans, similarly, fetishized the heart as the seat of love and emotion, even, as Marilyn Yalom noted, identifying the vena amoris as the “vein extending from the fourth finger of the left hand directly to the heart.” What is especially charming about this ancient Roman belief is that even though there is no anatomical truth to this, many still wear a wedding ring on the fourth finger of the left hand — because of its connection to the heart!

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St. Margaret Mary Alacoque is honoured by many for inspiring arguably the most consequential movement devoted explicitly to the sacred heart of Jesus. We are told that between 1673 and 1675 the French nun received explicit instructions from Christ Himself to honour His memory by using images of His sacred heart, which led to paintings and icons being produced and displayed, devotional days being set aside and so much more. But there are many other religious whose connection to the sacred heart of Jesus has set the scene for our understanding of this powerful metaphor.

St. Maria Goretti, the patron saint of the pure in heart, was an 11-year-old stabbed to death by her neighbour, whom she forgave before she died of her injuries. St. Stanislaus Kostka, the patron saint of seminarians and young students, is called on to intervene when we experience heart palpitations. St. John of God has been called the patron saint of heart disease. In a different way, St. Dwynen of Novena is called on for succour when we are suffering from a broken heart. St. Augustine, for his part, is often depicted holding a human heart, with some remarkable stained-glass images immortalizing the moment.

This rumination was brought to mind by a re-reading of Pope Francis’ fourth encyclical of his pontificate, Dilexit nos: (He loved us). As I’ve argued elsewhere, Dilexit nos calls on us to embrace that which makes us most human, but also most interconnected as children of God: the heart. Francis urges us to ignore the distractions of the age which have turned us into “insatiable consumers and slaves to the mechanisms of a market unconcerned about the deeper meaning of our lives.” Instead, we need to “rediscover the importance of the heart” and to reflect, profoundly, on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 

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As with his previous encyclicals, Francis reminds us to tap into our essential humanity, to forgo the frivolous and to embrace compassion. But perhaps more than his previous encyclicals, Dilexit nos is deeply centred on Jesus. At a time of catastrophic global violence, Dilexit nos reminds us that “Christ’s love can give a heart to our world and revive love wherever we think that the ability to love has been definitively lost.”

Perhaps this rumination on hearts is most fitting as we approach St. Valentine’s Day, immortalizing another saint and another reason for us to be connected to acts of the heart. Whether we believe in the vena amoris or not, we should all be connected to each other by our common bond. All our hearts, after all, should beat as one, surely the message that Christ Jesus proclaimed most loudly.