Pierre de Bérulle on the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts

Introduction

Though St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690) is often considered the founder of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, she was not the first to praise the Heart (though she fought to gain the Heart a feast). Hints of this devotion can be found in earlier writers, such as St. Gertrude (1256-1302), but the best formulator of the devotion was St. John Eudes (1601-1680). (St. John also wrote the texts of the Offices of the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts, which were celebrated in a few areas; it was St. Margaret Mary's demand that the Feast of the Sacred Heart be a universal feast, set on the first Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi, as was eventually done.) Hints of devotion to the Sacred Heart were already arising in France, such as in the writings of Jean de Bernières-Louvigny, but it was St. John who theologically fleshed out the devotion and its rationale. Among earlier writers he points to is Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle (1575-1629), with whom St. John lived for many years. Below are the main passages in Bérulle's writings that St. John points to as forerunners of his own theology of the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts.

Discourses on the State and on the Grandeurs of Jesus III.VII

... It is thus in this thought of the divine unities that He has willed to begin His new life upon earth, His life divinely human, and humanly divine. For He begins both His life and His elevation to God at one and the same time; He begins both to live on earth and to recognize God in heaven in one and the same moment and in one and the same place, that is to say, in the secret chamber, in the sacred oratory, and in the divine temple of the heart, of the bosom, and of the entrails of the Virgin. And in this intimate and august place, rendered holy and sacred by the operation of the Holy Spirit, by the presence of the Word, by the power of the Most High, Jesus, being newly conceived, enters immediately into His first occupation, in which His most secret interview, His highest elevation, and the most living and powerful application of His spirit, is in the view, in the homage, and in the love of the divine unities, where two things are found happily joined together, and both worthy of greatest veneration, by which the one is the first point of the accomplishment which God makes of this, His own work, and the other is the first contemplation which the soul of Jesus makes, at the same moment, of this same work of the Incarnation, which is a work of an admirable and new unity ...

Discourses on the State and on the Grandeurs of Jesus XI.XI

... But, leaving the Cross and Calvary for another time, and returning to Nazareth and to the crèche, what will I say of you, O holy Virgin, and of the secrets which came to pass in you? What will I say of you, and of that state, happy and permanent unto all eternity, into which you enter through this humble birth of Jesus, of Jesus, I say, being born in you and being born from you? You bear in yourself He Who bears everything, you contain He Who contains all, and you have enclosed within you the incomprehensible! He Who Is dwells wholly in you and forms a part of yourself; for the infant enclosed in the womb of the mother forms a part of the mother, lives from the substance of the mother; and thus—O marvel! O abyss—He Who is residing in the eternal Father is residing in you; He Who lives in His Father, from the substance of the Father, lives in you, and lives from your substance; He Who is in His Father without being part of the Father is in you and forms a part of you: and you, as partaking with the eternal Father, you have—indivisibly with Him—the same One as your son, Who has God for His Father. O supreme grandeur! O infinite dignity! O incomparable love! O most lovable society! O ineffable privacy! That you approach the Divinity, O holy Virgin, and so closely, that you approach it so honorably and familiarly, so lovingly and divinely!

For what is more intimate and more conjoined to the son than the mother, and to the Son of God than the Mother of God, who conceives Him in herself, who bears Him in her entrails, who encloses and comprehends Him within her, as a part and so noble a part of her, indeed, the most noble part of herself? For the state of Mother has this privilege in nature, to have and to bear a double spirit, double heart, and double life in one and the same body. And the state of Mother of God gives this privilege to the Virgin through nature and through grace, to have Jesus in herself, and to have Him as a noble part of her, and to have the spirit, the heart, and the life of Jesus so intimate to her, so conjoined to her spirit, to her heart, and to her life, that He is the spirit of her spirit, the heart of her heart, and the life of her life. O grandeur! O excess! O abyss! O excess of grandeurs! O abyss of marvels! You give life to Jesus, for He is your son; you receive life from Jesus, for He is your God, and you are thus giving and receiving life all together. And as the divine Word is receiving and giving being, life, and glory in eternity, all together, receiving it from the Father, giving it to the Holy Spirit, so you, O holy Virgin, who have the honor of being the Mother of the incarnate Word, you, I say, in His example and imitation, you are receiving and giving life all together: you are giving life to Jesus, and receiving life from Jesus; you give life to Jesus, animating the heart and the spirit of Jesus with your heart and with your spirit, and you receive from the heart and from the body of Jesus, living and residing in you, life in your heart, in your body, and in your spirit all together.

Works of Piety XLVI.9

In this new and divine life, I adore the first sojourn of Jesus in God His Father and in His holy Mother; for Jesus has a beginning, and they awaited it, sighed after it, for four thousand years. And He becomes a child at a moment, at an hour, and at a day. ... A day, an hour, and a moment begin this great work of the Incarnation of the Word, and gave a beginning to this great being, to this divine being, and to the indissoluble bond of the human filiation and the divine filiation. The hour and the moment that begin so great and so salutary a thing ought to never be forgotten. This hour, this moment uniting man to God puts God in the womb of the Virgin and man in the bosom of God. O admirable sojourn of this child in the bosom of the Father, through the divine filiation! O delightful sojourn of this child in the womb of His Mother, through His human filiation! I thus adore and admire this first sojourn of Jesus in the bosom of the Father and in the womb of His Mother; and, leaving the angels to behold the first, I want to contemplate the other, that is to say, I want to stop my spirit at the sojourn of Jesus in the Virgin and of the Virgin in Jesus, a sojourn of nine whole months. A sojourn which is the first sojourn and the first residence of the Son of God made man among men. This point is so tender and so sensible that it ought to be celebrated by the heart as well as the tongue. It is also a mystery of heart, and the tongue cannot express this sweetness and tenderness. It is a mystery of two hearts, the noblest and most conjoined that there will ever be, either on earth or in heaven. At that time, Jesus is living in Mary and forms a part of her, and the heart of Jesus is all near the heart of Mary. At that time, Mary is living in Jesus and Jesus is her all, and the heart of Mary is all near the heart of Jesus and streams life into it; at that time, Jesus and Mary form, it seems, naught but one living being upon earth. The heart of the one does not live nor breathe except through the other. These two hearts, so near and so divine, and living together with one life, so high, do they not each belong to the other, and do they not form the one in the other? Only love can think of this, and only divine and heavenly love; but only the love of Jesus Himself can comprehend it. This is a secret that we can adore, this is a secret that we ought to revere on earth, but which is reserved for us in heaven. O heart of Jesus living in Mary and through Mary! O heart of Mary living in Jesus and for Jesus! O delightful bond of these two hearts! Blessed be the God of love and unity, Who unites them together; may He unite our heart to these two hearts, and may He make it that these three hearts live in unity, in honor of the sacred unity that is in the three divine Persons.

Source: Oeuvres Complêtes de de Bérulle, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1856), 199, 379-380, 1001-1002.

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