• Creativity in Cold Lentils
• Recovering Hope
• Truth Is A Two-Way Street
• Our chance to stand in solidarity
• Human Rights: a common meeting place?
• The Heart of God
• Dare to Dream
• Learning to Listen
• Finding meaning in the experience
• Towards An Understanding of Home
• Silence
• Peregrinasaun Haksolok Hamutuk
• Peace
• The Big Show
• Weakness and Strength
• United in Peace
• The Ring
• ACUSA
• People as seeds of hope and change
• Being Grateful
• In the midst of 250,000 people
• UN World Habitat Day
• Praying The Rosary
• I Want To Make A Difference
• How Fragile we are
• The Challenge of email
• Being Socially Responsible
• Thirsting for Knowledge
• The Lord is my Shepherd
• Archived Thoughts of the Week
• An Idea

Traditionally June is the month of the Sacred Heart, which focuses our attention on the humanity of Jesus. The heart, being recognized throughout the centuries as a vital organ of the body, has long been used figuratively as a source of and to represent the deepest feelings of a human person:

‘I love you with all my heart’

‘I plead with you from the bottom of my heart …’

‘heart speaks to heart’

‘he/she is heartless’

‘my heart yearns’

and so it goes on! Widely known in the Western World is Augustine of Hippo’s (354-430) seminal prayer: ‘our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee’. (The Confessions of St Augustine).

In France in the early 19th century Jules Chevalier chose the Sacred Heart as the focus of his newly formed missionary order as an antidote to the heresy of Jansenism which was distorting the holiness of the physical nature of humanity. The recent,‘heart felt’ public exchange of views on the portrayal of the naked body, especially of children, in art focuses our attention on that complex, rich, vulnerable humanity which God chose to share with us.

• Sophie McGrath,
• Golding Centre for Women’s History,
• Theology and Spirituality