1. INTRODUCTION

One of the less publicized facts concerning Karl Rahner is that his doctoral dissertation in theology, written in 1936 and as yet unpublished, was "on the Church's origin from the wound in the side of Christ as portrayed in the writings of the Fathers." Rahner's interest in the pierced side of Christ has never left him. It is the aim of this essay to examine briefly some of his writings on the Sacred Heart and to discuss their relevance for the local Church in Hong Kong.

2. THE WORD "HEART"

Rahner begins his consideration of the devotion to the Sacred Heart by examining the word "heart" in its symbolic significance. Although the word "heart" of necessity includes the idea of bodiliness and therefore includes also the bodily heart, "in the original (and not the subsesequent, derived or metaphorical) sense, 'heart' is a primal word. It is not susceptible of a proper definition by the joining of better known concepts."(3) The word "heart", Rahner adds, "falls into the category of words for the whole man; that is, it signifies a human reality predicable of the whole man as a person of body and spirit, a reality which is therefore prior to any possible distinction between body and soul."(4) Rahner continues:－

"Heart", taken in this primal sense, denotes the centre which is the original kernel of everything else in the human person..... Here is the focal point of a man's primal and integral relations with others and above all with God: for God is concerned with the whole man, and in his divine actions it is to man's centre, his heart, that he addresses his graces or his judgements.(5)

Since a heart can either be good or wicked the author emphasizes that "it is..... by no means inevitable nor a matter of course that 'heart' should imply love. The fact that Lord freely wished the centre of his Person to consist of 'love for us' is just the incomprehensible thing in our experience if him. "(6) Rahner adds, as if in wonderment, :－

And our ultimate discovery is that this centre (this "Heart") is possessed by a free, unfathomable love. This love, as the inmost "essence" of God himself, is bestowed on us as a free gift. And it is this love that characterizes and unifies all the attitudes of our Lord. (7)

Given the above considerations Rahner goes on to define veneration of the Sacred Heart as "the latreutic cult of the Person of Christ under the aspect of his Heart in so far as this is governed by the prodigal love of God for sinful men, the love in which God gives himself to the sinner."(8)

3. CERTAIN DOGMATIC CONSIDERATIONS

Rahner states that "theology can and must show that the devotion to the Sacred Heart is materially contained in the Scripture and in patristic and medieval tradition."(9) But he immediately adds: "nevertheless this abstract dogmatic argument and the indication of a precedent will not provide sufficient basis for the present devotion to the Sacred Heart. "(10) For this we must appeal "to the ‘private revelations’of Paray-le-Monial."(11)

In its present form the devotion to the Sacred Heart is a "new creation, from the perennially valid material of the faith, of something that was demanded at that precise moment by the actual historical circumstances of the Church. "(12)

Rahner further explains that "the private revelation points out the one path which the Church must with all urgency take. What is new is not the matter of such a revelation but the placing or shifting of the emphasis within the ambit of what is legitimate for Christianity."(13)

4. DEVOTION IS ESPECIALLY FOR THE MODERN WORLD

Some have claimed that devotion to the Sacred Heart was a corrective for Jansenism. Rahner denies this and states, concerning what is new in the devotion, that: "It cannot be described exclusively or even principally in terms of Jansenism. Not only was Jansenism and its range of ideas too ephemeral a phenomenon to provoke such an answer, but the message only became effective in a period no longer swayed by Jansenism."(14)

Rahner now comes to one of the central points concerning his theology of devotion to the Sacred Heart. He explains the newness of the devotion thus:－

The message must therefore be intended for the modern situation in general, which properly began only with the French Revolution. This period is characterized, and that in ever increasing measure, by the secularisation of life (of the state, society, economy, science, art). The religious values of Christianity are being progressively eliminated from modern life, and the burden of belief is resting more and more exclusively on the personal decision of the individual. The Christian world, which could once carry a man almost independently of his own decision, is subject to unceasing attenuation. Every man must live, irrespective of whether he decides for or against Christianity, in a situation marked by the outward, and therefore also inward, "absence of God", a situation which corresponds to Golgotha and Gethsemane in the life of Jesus (Mk. 14, 32 ff.; 15, 32 ff.), where life is to be found in death, where abandonment implies the deepest proximity to God, and where the power of God parades itself in weakness. (15)

Since the world is becoming more and more secularised and followers of Christ in the modern world find themselves more and more in a context of a world in which love has grown cold, then it is fitting that devotion to the Sacred Heart emphasizes the following: "the interior life, faith in the love of God, present even when it seems furthest away (in consequence of the growing sin and godlessness of the world, from which believers and unbelievers alike suffer), and reparation."(16) Rahner now explains these three aspects of the devotion more fully:－

Interior life is not the selfish luxury of religious introversion. The interior man is rather he who, by the power of God, believes and loves in spirit and in truth, in a world where the love of God has grown cold, or at least has almost ceased to project itself into "exterior" life. Interior life means the strengthening of man in faith and love without the props of an externally Christian society.

The second characteristic is faith in the love of God in spite of his judgements. It has a special meaning in our day, when God, the Lord of history, appears as an angry judge, when the hour of darkness seems to have overtaken human history, and the historical situation of the world reflects mysteriously the interior state of souls.

Reparation means the endurance of this godless situation with and in the Son, in Gethsemane and Golgotha, and fellowship in Christ's apparently fruitless love for the sinful world.(17)

5. SPIRITUALITY AND DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART

Although devotion to the Sacred Heart is, according to Pope XI, summa totius religionis (the epitome of all devotion), nevertheless it would be wrong to think that "devotion to the Sacred Heart and the spiritual life are one and the same thing..... The heart is the origin and centre of, but it is not identical with, the whole spiritual life."(18)

One could speak broadly about devotion to the Sacred Heart in such a way that it "would be conceptually and materially identical with Christianity. But that could be only harmful to the devotion."(19) Although it is possible to focus the whole of the spiritual life on explicit, conscious devotion to the Sacred Heart, "such a concentration is not part of the devotion recommended to every Christian."(20) This is because "Christian spirituality, which will include devotion to the Sacred Heart..... allows of an endless variety of forms, and within it devotion to the Sacred Heart can appear in the most various shapes and degrees of intensity. "(21)

1.Herbert Vorgrimler, Karl Rahner: His Life, Thought and Work, trans. Edward Quinn (London: Burns and Oates, 1965): p.26.

2.Karl Rahner, "Some Theses on the Theology of the Devotion," in Heart of the Saviour: A Symposium on Devotion to the Sacred Heart, edited by Josef Stierli (Freiburg: Herder, 1957): pp. 131 - 156. This same essay has been published, in a different translation, in Karl Rahner, "Some Theses for a Theology of Devotion to the Sacred Heart," Theological Investigations, vol. 3: The Theology of the Spiritual Life, trans. Karl-H and Boniface Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon, 1967; London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1967): pp. 331- 352. In this article quotations will be take from the former Stierli edition. Cf. Karl Rahner, "The Theology of the Symbol," Theological Investigations, vol. 4: More Recent Writings, trans. Kevin Smyth (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966; New York: Seabury, 1966): pp. 245 - 252.

3.Ibid., p. 132. Cf. Karl Rahner, "’Behold This Heart.’: Prelimiaries to a Theology of Devotion to the Sacred Heart," Theological Investigations, vol. 3: The Theology of the Spiritual Life, trans. Karl-H and Boniface Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon, 1967; London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1967): pp. 321-330; Karl Rahner, "The Theological Meaning of the Veneration of the Sacred Heart," Theological Investigations, vol. 8: Further Theology of the Spiritual Life 2, trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1971; New York: Herder and Herder, 1971): pp. 217 - 228.

4.Ibid. Cf. Karl Rahner, "Faith as Courage," Meditations on Freedom and the Spirit (New York: Seabury, 1978): pp. 9-11, for a further discussion of this category of words.

5.Ibid., p. 133. Cf. Karl Rahner, "Sacred Heart," The Eternal Year, trans. John Shea, S. S. (London: Burns and Oates, 1964): pp. 121 - 128.

6.Ibid.

7.Ibid., p.137.

8.Ibid., p.138.

9.Ibid., p.139.

10.Ibid.

11.Ibid.

12.Ibid.

13.Ibid., p.140.

14.Ibid., p. 141.

15.Ibid.

16.Ibid., p.142. (Rahner’s italics.)

17.Ibid. (Rahner’s italics.)

18.Ibid., p.144.

19.Ibid., p.145.

20.Ibid.

21.Ibid., p.146.