Between the Sign of the Cross and the Symbol of the Heart Hermeneutics of Christ’s Divine and Human Love

Abstract

The mystery of Jesus’ Heart cannot be separated from the mystery of His cross. They both illustrate, but also realize God’s incomprehensible love for man – its realism and fact. They both also depict the divine-human dimension of salvation effected in the person of Christ. In this way the paradox of this love reaches its peak. Although they both express the same love, they are in a way beside each other, and they need each other so that the love could be expressed, be voiced. What happened on the cross is in a way complemented and consolidated in the image of the Heart. The core of this hermeneutics is: the act of Jesus’ Heart becomes clear in the cross, and the cross in the love of the Heart. At the same time in Jesus’ Heart – Jesus as the God and a man – the act of God’s love is joined in one thing, where human love is a reply to the priority of loving on the side of God; it is in it that it is fulfilled and verified. God’s love – the one that was crucified and wounded with the spear – only explains the significance of human love.