The Sacred Heart and the Three Loves of Jesus

In his encyclical, Haurietis Aquas, issued in 1956 on the centenary of the Feast of the Sacred Heart, Pius XII offers us several metaphors for the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It’s the “mystical ladder” which we climb to “embrace God Our Savior.” It’s also a “most precious shrine” which contains the “unlimited treasures of His merits.” The encyclical itself takes its name for yet another metaphor for Christ’s heart in Isaiah 12:3: “You shall draw waters with joy out of the savior’s foundations.”
All three are images that invite us to draw near and contemplate the Sacred Heart. As we do so, it becomes apparent that the Sacred Heart speaks to the ‘threefold’ love of Christ, as Pius XII puts it. There is, first of all, the trinitarian love among Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. But then, there is also the love that Christ, God made man, has for us.
This love, in turn, has two aspects to it. Because Christ was wholly divine and wholly man, His heart was not only divine, but also human. “And finally—and this in a more natural and direct way—it is the symbol also of sensible love, since the body of Jesus Christ, formed by the Holy Spirit, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, possesses full powers of feelings and perception, in fact, more so than any other human body,” Pius XII writes. (Of course, Christ’s human and divine hearts, like His human and divine natures, must always be understood as united to each other.)
Love of the Trinity
Jesus’ entire ministry can be seen as an expression of the trinitarian love, because it is carried out in obedience to God the Father. But Christ’s love for the Father is particularly apparent in several distinct moments.
One is the cleansing of the money-changers from the temple. “His