Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
Father Don Wolf, a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, offers a Catholic perspective on the issues confronting each person today.
Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
The Heart Cries Out: How the Church Responds to Each Era's Spiritual Needs | June 29, 2025
In this episode, Father Wolf explores the rich history and profound meaning behind the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, explaining how this spiritual practice emerged during the Scientific Revolution as a counterbalance to an increasingly mechanical view of God and the universe.
• The Sacred Heart devotion originated in northern Europe during the mid-17th century when scientific advancement was beginning to change how people viewed God and creation
• Throughout Christian history, believers have created new spiritual expressions when existing forms failed to nourish their souls
• As science portrayed the universe as mechanical and governed by immutable laws, theological understanding often followed suit, creating an image of God bound by rigid justice
• The Sacred Heart devotion emphasized Christ's human compassion against the cold intellectualism of the age
• For modern Catholics, this devotion invites us to recognize that God works in the depths of our hearts, beyond both cold rationality and shallow emotionalism
• Jesus meets us wherever we are in our spiritual journey, offering divine mercy that flows from love rather than obligation
Join us in exploring how this "old-fashioned" devotion still offers profound wisdom for contemporary spiritual seekers.
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Father Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.
This is Living Catholic with Father Don Wolfe. This show deals with living the Catholic faith in our time, discovering God's presence in our lives and finding hope in His Word. And now your host, father Don Wolfe.
Speaker 2:Welcome Oklahoma to Living Catholic. I'm Father Don Wolfe, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Oklahoma City and rector of the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother. Here at Sacred Heart Parish we take a special interest in the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. While that might be blindingly obvious, at least to the origin of our interest, it is the case that there is a shocking ignorance about this devotion in the Church at large, not to mention a lack of appreciation of what the history of the emphasis on the Sacred Heart tells us about the genius of the Catholic Church and its people. Given that we've just passed the feast day of the Sacred Heart, it might be time to refresh everyone's memory and understanding. But first a few facts. The most common name for parish churches and missions here in Oklahoma, after the various names for devotion to Mary, is the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This is no accident and emphasizes the northern European origin of the pastors and people that made up the first Catholic settlers to Oklahoma. This devotion was most popular in northern Europe and the gift of its meaning as a manifestation of the concern and piety of the people from a manifestation of the concern and piety of the people from this part of the world is one the whole Church of Oklahoma has received.
Speaker 2:The feast was first established in the middle of the 17th century, during the time in which the exaltation of the mind was just beginning, that is to say when the energy of society was waking up to the power of the mind and the gift of science. The souls of the people in the pews were seeking to be fed by something more substantial. Often, this hunger was not recognized or responded to by the most celebrated religious expression of the day, and Christians suffered because they ignored what the soul desired. This is a lesson we have to relearn in every generation. It pays to pay attention to what's going on in our souls and among us in our prayer. The Latin phrase most appropriate to this sentiment is lex orandi, lex credendi, which means that the law of prayer is the law of belief. Unpacking the phrase, we have to notice what people long for when they pray, lest we forget what our souls really need. The devotion to the sacred heart of Jesus is part of paying attention to what's important. Now.
Speaker 2:This is the conundrum the people faced. It's a version of the difficulty we all face and it goes back a long way in the history of the church, when Christian belief was rescued from prohibition and then later became the official practice of the Roman Empire, believers were concerned that professing Christ became too easy. If no one had a stake in believing, then a person could become a Christian without a thought of giving himself to Christ. A person could be as unconsciously a follower of Christ as he was unconsciously a resident of a city or a member of a country. With that, these people were afraid the whole Christian movement would dissolve. So in response, there were those who acted to take up active, conscious pursuit of total Christian belief and practice. They went out to the desert to seek out active resistance to and combat with the devil. Wanting to emulate the heroes of the past, who were heroic in virtue and commitment, they selflessly pursued the most active, the most engaged relationship possible with the commands of Jesus. In response to ease and peace, they sought difficulty and contest. Their hearts cried out in hunger for what was necessary to grow and progress in Christian life, and they found it among the monastic movement in the desert.
Speaker 2:Later on, when the empire had fallen apart and the whole world became a patchwork of princedoms and townships, the Christian heart cried out for unity and purpose. This was satisfied in a series of relationships between believers that transcended borders and language and centered on common prayer and a common life together. That was the medieval monastic movement that resulted in a continent-wide web of communities that later became the basis for the spread of Christian civilization to the darkest corners of the pagan world of the time. The cry of the soul, answered by the intent of the monks, produced forms of piety and manners of living that changed everything in the church and in civil society. The heart cries out, the people respond. That's the life of the church in the world. Think of the cries that have gone forth in our world.
Speaker 2:One of the greatest spiritual movements of the 20th century, for example, was the development of Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12-step process. And the 12-step process. We've become so aware of its presence and its dynamics that we seldom pause to think of it as an invention, a response to the situation in which we found ourselves. But it was born out of the world of modern American civilization and now has found purchase throughout the entire world. We are a 12-step people. After all. Alcoholism was a reality all through civilization, that is, it was a danger for all those who consumed alcohol from the moment it was first sampled 10,000 years ago and yet it took up to our age for it to find a source of identification and healing. Partly this was because we entered an age in which alcohol and its abuse became affordable. Only people who aren't living from hand to mouth can abuse themselves to death.
Speaker 2:In response, a movement arose in America, a place of prosperity that focused on non-hierarchical strategies and self-awareness methods to embody the dynamics of sin and forgiveness, without mentioning church or creed or doctrine. That is, it was an American response to what had become an American problem. The heart cried out. The answer came forth to satisfy what the soul was parched to receive. Aa is now universal because American understanding and American insights are universal. But it came about first as a cry from the heart, first satisfied in American idiom and American religious practice. In the 1600s, as we were becoming aware of the great power of the human intellect to understand and define natural laws and the beauty of nature, the heart also cried out.
Speaker 2:It seemed almost magical the way scientists of the time were demonstrating their powers of observation and their ability to interpret their findings. What they were concluding may seem pedestrian to us now, but at the time their claims were revolutionary and were overturning the common views of the world. Just think of the amazing change to come over the world as people began to understand that, apart from everything they, when they looked at the sunrise and the sunset, the sun wasn't moving. The earth was when the astronomers could pull out their data and demonstrate that their proposition about the sun being the center of the solar system, the entire world woke up to a whole new planet. Not only that, they were able to explain themselves and their ideas using new ways of thinking about numbers.
Speaker 2:When Isaac Newton strove to understand what he was seeing of the world, he invented a whole new branch of mathematics to account for the measurements he had and their explanation of relationship to one another. It wasn't just the power to observe and explain relationship to one another. It wasn't just the power to observe and explain, it was also the brain power involved in realizing the relationships and interconnections of what he saw one to another. Think of it Suddenly, the world had an explanation for how the earth moved around the sun and how the planets moved in relationship to one another. With the same set of explanations that included why we have tides and how the moon revolves around the earth and how objects fall to the ground. Suddenly, with the insight of scientific explanation, the world became explainable. This opened the world to a whole different view of itself. By replacing mystery with numbers, the power of the intellect began to reign supreme.
Speaker 2:There was nothing more powerfully accomplished at this time than the displacement of all of the explanations for the mysteries of the stars and the planets by the solid and certain mathematical equations of the scientists of the time. From being laden with inscrutabilities to becoming the arena of certainty, the world became a different place in that age. Previously, god was required to explain how things worked, and the image was of the divinity leaning over the working of the world to keep it humming Afterwards, god was deemed superfluous to creation, whose image was reduced to the ticking of a clock. At best, god became the one who set things in motion and then who sat back content to watch it run. It was the triumph of the intellect over feeling, of the victory of mechanics over mystery. One unanticipated outcome of this set of discoveries was a new focus on the laws made by men. It may seem odd to imagine that looking at the stars had caused men to change their view of one another, but it was the case If the tides and the planets all moved according to the laws of nature, not to be repealed or altered, then the laws of men, if they are to participate in the grandeur of nature, should also be of the same type it was thought it was.
Speaker 2:At this time the great project of national comprehensive law began to be formulated. This even began to touch on the laws of God. Certainly, everyone had understood that God's law was intricate and comprehensive and touched everyone's life. And God's law was for everyone in the same way. It wasn't to be trifled with or escaped or subverted. Its author was God himself, after all. But everyone experienced the laws of men as expression of God's law to be trifled with or escaped, or subverted. Its author was God himself, after all. But everyone experienced the laws of men as expression of God's law to be local and particular, to be subject to interpretation and evasion. Not only that, the laws of the land were a patchwork of local customs, common traditions, unwritten practices and explicit statutes. People lived their lives as members of small towns and local areas. Hardly anyone thought of himself as belonging to a large, comprehensive expanse that had universal claims and common interests.
Speaker 2:But as nations began to grow, at this time the idea began to grow, that law should be comprehensive, to every place and every time. Just as nature operated according to its mechanics, the concourse of life should function according to the laws of men that could be just as mechanical and just as comprehensive. It was the triumph of intellect and function over the fractured history and staccato implementation of the laws of the land. Mind and thought were to triumph over heart and history. That was the ideal, and this became such an overwhelming part of the way people thought. Even their ideas of God were touched by it.
Speaker 2:By changing their understanding of how laws worked, their image of God was changed as well. Rather than a divine father who loved his children, the image of God became one of a harsh judge, bound by the immutabilities of the laws created by him, no matter the mercy proclaimed by Jesus and won by his sacrifice. God the Father was imagined to be the referee who saw everything and apportioned it only according to what was done. God meant guilt and not much more. In truth, it was the triumph of the power of this vision of the world over any other view of God. Justice held sway over mercy. Retribution and punishment became the watchwords that shouted down forbearance and forgiveness. People were held hostage to a picture of the world that seemed well-explained and logical, even if it was new and harsh. But that's the power of pictures to make the world. Certainly, this power, these pictures did make the world. Certainly, this power, these pictures did make the world.
Speaker 2:Jesus, as the Son of God, was often thought of as the helpless victim of God's own justice. He was the one who paid the price of our sins. Thrust into the role of appeasing God's thirst for the divine restoration of the balance of the world, his words were often treated as indictments rather than invitations, as demands rather than demurs. Jesus, the Lamb of God, became a tough guy, an invitation to realize how serious and harsh the life of grace could be. In the words of an historian of the day, it was despite Jesus offering himself for the salvation of all. The general opinion was that mostly it was a waste of time. Just about everyone was going to misuse what Jesus had done. It was the conquest of Christ's humanity by this harsh divinity, and it seemed only obvious Now.
Speaker 2:Of course, not every person in the world was thinking these thoughts about science and technology. They weren't obsessed with the mechanical view of the world and the ironclad function of laws. As in every age. What people quote-unquote think is multi-layered and variable, full of every aspect of life and history. At the same time, the points of view of the thought leaders certainly mattered. They were the ones who helped to frame the way questions were asked and answers were formulated. It's this aspect of the common life of the faith that touches everyone. Those who ask the questions control the conversations and, at the end of the day, the conversations were about this conundrum of living the faith between the hard truths of invariable science and the laws of God and nature. Often, the picture painted was splashed with jarring colors.
Speaker 2:However, there's always more to the life of faith than the thoughts that fill the minds of smart people. After all, the faith was first experienced and formulated by fishermen. There was always more to it than thinking the right thoughts or making sure people said the right words. When John the Baptist saw Jesus and commented that there is the Lamb of God, he hadn't spent a long time deducing the candidates for the position and then finally settling on the name of Jesus of Nazareth, as if this were some kind of differential equation to reason and solve. He responded by way of his heart, by way of the sum of himself, in response to what he knew and how he felt. The life of faith is first of all a life, not a science project, and he was expressing himself from the heart of his life.
Speaker 2:St John Henry Cardinal Newman lays this process out when he described how we come to understand what truth is in our lives. Among other things, we reach into our lives and sum up what we feel about certain experiences as we wonder about the new things we've encountered in our lives, how something feels or what happened to us the last time we thought about this idea or what it was like the last time we were around someone who represented a particular attitude or feeling to us. These are the elements that we weigh as we're trying to figure out the truth. The last thing we do is get out a piece of paper and make a list of pros and cons and then decide where our decision will fall. Imagine doing that when deciding if a person you met is worth thinking about as a potential spouse. Nobody sits down and figures it all out. He goes as much by feeling as by function, by reaction as much as by reason.
Speaker 2:It's this way for all of us, in the midst of a world in which it seemed the world was locked in the grip of a distant and harsh God, one who was unbending and unvarying from the demands of eternal justice. Another sense developed With every conclusion about how God's toughness defined him. There were the images of God's care and concern that filled the minds and hearts of believers. Jesus didn't simply condemn sinners. He forgave them. He didn't appeal to God to relieve the divine demand for just condemnation. He appealed to his Father to love them, as he did. And Jesus assured his followers that he had come not to condemn the world but to save it.
Speaker 2:In all these moments, the message from the scriptures as well as the experience and testimony of saints. The message from the scriptures, as well as the experience and testimony of saints and the common experience of believers all pointed toward an experience of God greater than the conclusions of the age. God and God's law were something beyond the boundaries of cold logic and bare rationality. Jesus was a man who ministered to his people from the heart, not from the intellect. He was a man of feeling, not of frigidity. After all, when did he tell anyone to leave because there was no hope for them, or tell them to abandon their pursuit of God because justice had left them behind.
Speaker 2:An entire movement rose up to invite all believers to focus on and to trust in the compassionate truth of Jesus' love for his people. It was the reminder of the truth of Jesus' humanity, the reality of his interaction with the people he came to serve. Rather than simply a prisoner of logic, jesus was the embodiment of compassion and forgiveness, the truth of God's gift to the world. For the world, it was the appeal of his heart. Just as every man has a true heart for his beloved, so Jesus' heart is for us, for all those who come to him, who appeal to his humanity, who entrust themselves to his compassion. Thus it was the devotion to the sacred heart of Jesus arose, and it was his sacred heart. Throughout all of Christian history.
Speaker 2:We have to be reminded of Jesus' humanity along with his divinity. It seems we run from one extreme to another, focusing at once on his divinity and his identity as God among us at the expense of his humanity, and then we abandon our understanding of his divinity as we focus on his human side as a great teacher and companion. The devotion to the sacred heart of Jesus is the reminder that the compassion of Christ and his willingness to respond to the needs of those around him is the very heart of God's own self. Pope Francis said it so well when he wrote that the name of God is mercy and his mission is forgiveness is mercy and his mission is forgiveness. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the trust in compassion as the very center of God's own presence. It's the trust we have in God and God's goodness given to us as an antidote to the intellectualized and dispassionate God so commonly described in that age.
Speaker 2:The devotion to the Sacred Heart allowed everyone to reclaim the truth of God's offer to us. We are connected to the gift of God, not because of God's cold logic. The gift of God is to reach out and to save those created in the divine image. It's rooted in God's love for us. God is saving us because the divine desire for us. It's because of that divine desire. It's not because it's rooted in the inevitability of God's goodness or the requirements of divine justice. The truth is, god wants us, god loves us, god desires for us to respond to everything offered to us.
Speaker 2:The drama of Revelation is that everything possible to save us from the heart has been done to bring us to every hope and to each part of God's goodness. This is what our ancestors knew and why they responded with such enthusiasm to this devotion. In my parents' bedroom, for example, over their bed was a picture of the sacred heart of Jesus and the immaculate heart of Mary. Both of these are proclamations that the gift of God is poured out by way of the center of our lives, that it is given to us just as we strive to live and to make our way in the world. And this is the Catholic insight contained in this devotion. We come to God and are received by him in any way we are able, whether we're CS Lewis and talk about our faith as if it were the analysis of our daily thoughts, or whether we're John Wesley, who came to God by a strange warming of his heart as he read the scriptures, or Mother Teresa, who heard the voice of Jesus speaking directly to her, or Monsignor Ronald Knox, who finally concluded he belonged in the church that he had spent so much time reading about. By whatever means and in whatever form, god is ready to receive us and to make us his own.
Speaker 2:This devotion to the sacred heart also takes on a new cast in our age. Certainly, we're not attracted to the dry, dispassionate conclusions of so many years ago and so we don't have to be invited into the warm arms of emotion and enthusiasm After all, we're surfeited with silly emotions everywhere and from everyone. No, the sacred heart of Jesus is for us the invitation to know that what takes place in the depths of our hearts, not just in the facile flashes of our emotion, is holy. If we take the sacred heart of Jesus seriously, we can honor the truth that God is at work in the deep parts of our lives, and we can afford to pay attention and to honor what's going on there. Even if we're flitting from one thing to another, buffeted by emotion and sentiment, we can know that the person of Jesus reads our hearts and knows our true self, budding from the warm soil of our most heartfelt desires and decisions. If we pause, we can know Jesus is as close to us as we are to ourselves. This is an old-fashioned insight, but it still works for us in our age. We are exactly the people who need to know. Our forefathers found it helpful to follow their hearts because they knew their hearts were the pathway to Christ. If we can just pause for a moment and be assured that God, our Father, wants us and Jesus has already opened a pathway to God's presence by offering us his life from the heart. Then we'll know God is on our side, he's for us. It's not too late to take a look inside and see what's going on there. You might be surprised that the answers you're looking for, the ones you've been waiting to find, are lying there, already waiting to be discovered. The sacred heart of Jesus is simply the assurance that our hearts are the pathway to the very heart of God's love and care, and that's a promise we can live with Back in just a moment.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to our final segment, faith in Verse. We have a poem today called Afternoon Langer. Afternoon Langer seduces us all as the warm sun shines and comfort falls. Seldom do the muses rouse with their call as recovered by satisfaction's pall. But what else should we all go and do, interrupting the rhythms of nature in lieu of some other imperative that might arouse if our moment of rest just up and flew? No better to pause in turn and truly rest In an hour more we could give our best would be more prepared for the contest and in some have more, not be left with less. Here's to the honored siesta, here and now, to the time nature will to us allow before our cruel schedules. We must not cow, since all nature's soils must be shaped and plowed. That's Afternoon Langer. All of us are invited to the fullness of faith. I hope that in the weeks to come we can all explore what it means to be Living Catholic together.
Speaker 1:Living Catholic is a production of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City for Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more, visit okcrorg.