El Sagrado Corazon

"Your heart is greater than your wounds." 

-Henri Nouwen

How religious traditions deal with suffering is a question that always leads interesting places. While suffering is commonly depicted as a journey, it also can be a place with its own geography. Babylon, for example, is a place synonymous with suffering in the Hebrew Bible:

"By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion." (Psalm 137:1)

In Buddhism and Hinduism, the geography of suffering is internal, located in the human mind.

In Christianity, suffering is in the drama of Christ's passion before and during his crucifixion on the cross at Golgotha. As Miguel Rojas Mix (1987) has argued, in the Baroque art of the Counter-Reformation, blood-drenched Christs were "sacred actors in a human tragedy."

This week, while teaching about art in colonial Latin America, I came upon this painting of the Sacred Heart (El Sagrado Corazon de Jesus) from 18th century Mexico: 

Alegorías del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús y la Santísima Trinidad, 1747

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary dates to the life of 17th century French nun Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, who succeeded in establishing it in her convent after years of religious visions. The heart represents Christ's compassion and suffering for humanity. Notice in the painting that it bears a marking of the crucified body of Christ (on left, below the crown of thorns).

As a symbol of intense feeling and pulsating energy, the heart of Christ is a baroque element that resonated with Nahuatl-speaking Mexicans whose indigenous religious practices centered around heart sacrifice as necessary means for keeping the universe in motion.  While those practices had long ceased by the 1700s, Nahuatl poetry preserved the importance of the heart as the seat of life and of the spirit:

"I sing so that I may rejoice the Cause of All, 

as the dawn approaches in the house of thy heart."

I am interested in how the Sacred Heart is an external representation of suffering using something so interior and vital to the human body. No longer hidden inside of the chest, the heart of Christ bleeds openly for humanity. It is raw, lacerated, and often covered in throbbing veins. Christ stretches out his arms to anyone who will come close to it.

Town of El Morro, Baja California, Mexico

The late Catholic priest Henri Nouwen argues in his book, The Inner Voice of Love, that we cannot deal with our suffering intellectually -- we must feel it deeply in our hearts. For him, the journey out of suffering begins with becoming aware of one's wounds and then opening oneself to feeling their intense pain.

Because suffering is central to the human experience, it is a great theme to deal with when examining religious traditions, comparatively or not.

However you may be dealing with suffering, much heart to you in your journey.