Tag Archives: Aramaic

Too Many Jameses: Untangling Jesus’s Family and Friends

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Apostle St. James the Greater, by El Greco (1606).

Apostle St. James the Greater, by El Greco (1606).

This is a little reflection I meant to make a few months ago on May 3, the Feast of Saints Philip and James, regarding the confusion about who that particular Saint James, the son of Alphaeus, actually is. But I got busy that day and didn’t post. Today is the Feast of Saint James the Greater, the son of Zebedee, and while there’s no confusion about who he is, this post is still nibbling at me, and I don’t want to wait until next May 3. It’s still kind of relevant.

Because there are at least two or three men in the New Testament named James. And that’s really no surprise — because there were no doubt thousands of men with that name in Judea in the first century. The name translated James in English comes from the name Ιάκωβος (Iakōbos) in the Greek New Testament. Yes, you guessed it; that’s the name יעקב (ya‛ăqôb) in Hebrew — the Old Testament Jacob in English. James is named for Jacob, Israel himself, the patriarch of the Jewish people.

James II, by Peter Lely

James II of England, by Peter Lely.

Francis II, Jacobite King

All hail His Majesty King Francis II, our rightful king.

(The name becomes Iacobus or Jacobus in Latin, giving rise, in English history, to the terms Jacobean, pertaining to the period of King James I's reign, and Jacobite, the name for the restorationist followers of the deposed King James II and his line of Stuart pretenders to the throne. James was removed for being Catholic, and for his tolerance toward English Catholics, in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which I now see to have been not so glorious. Some of my ancestors, apparently, were Scottish Jacobites, and were exiled to America for taking part in the failed Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, in support of James’s grandson Charles Edward Stuart, “Bonnie Prince Charlie.” Maybe I have some Catholic ancestors after all? Bonnie Prince Charlie and his father, James Francis Edward Stuart, styled James III by the Jacobites, are buried (1) in high Catholic honor (2) in the Grottoes of St. Peter’s Basilica. I’m no longer sure how I feel about the “Glorious” Revolution or the Jacobites. James II was pretty well lawfully usurped, at least in as much as usurpation is ever lawful. I now see, though, that this is a history of which I know very little. The intolerance and persecution toward Catholics that spurred it was certainly not a good thing. I hope you have enjoyed this rabbit trail as much as I have.)

Anyway — to the matter at hand. There were a lot of Jameses in Judea at the time of Christ. James the Greater, the Apostle celebrated today, was so called to distinguish him from the other Apostle named James, the son of Alphaeus (Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, Luke 6:15). James the Greater, we know, was the son of Zebedee (Mark 1:19, 3.17, etc.) and the brother of John. He and John were called by the Lord Boanerges, “Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:17). In Jesus’s Aramaic, scholars reckon, this was probably בנירגיש (bnê•rğaš), lit. “sons of tumult,” or בנירגז (bnê•rğaz), lit. “sons of anger” — or as Aramaic scholar Maurice Casey supposes, בנירעם (bnê•r`am), the most literal Aramaic translation of “sons of thunder,” the result of a poor transliteration from Aramaic into Greek. So apparently, James and John were rather hot-headed, as we see in Scripture (Luke 9:51–56).

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were fellow fishermen with their father, and the associates of Simon Peter and his brother Andrew — or possibly their competitors (Mark 1:16–20). They were among the first disciples to follow Jesus, and with Simon Peter, formed His most intimate circle, who were chosen to witness His Transfiguration (Luke 9:28–36, etc.). We know that Saint James was the first of the Apostles to suffer martyrdom (Acts 12:1–3), about A.D. 44, perhaps having provoked Herod’s wrath on account of his temper.

Santiago Matamoros (Saint James the Moor-slayer)

Santiago Matamoros (Saint James the Moor-slayer), according to Spanish legend, appeared at the Battle of Clavijo to fight the Moors alongside the Spanish Christian army.

Saint James is the patron saint of Spain. According to Spanish legend, James ministered there, then sailed back to Jerusalem to meet his martyrdom. His relics were then transported back to Spain, either by his disciples or miraculously by angels, where they are said to be venerated in Santiago de Compostela (the Spanish name Santiago is actually Sant’Iago, or Saint James). Saint James’s patronage is a pious legend of the utmost importance to the Spanish, as fanciful as it seems. It is not out of the question that James went to Spain, a province of the Roman Empire; travel there in the first century was certainly possible. Paul desired to minister there, according to his Epistle to the Romans, written ca. A.D. 57 (Romans 15:22–24). According to the tradition of the Early Church, he did before his death.

So what of the other Jameses? There are three others mentioned in the New Testament: James, the son of Alphaeus, one of the Twelve (Mark 3:18, etc.); James, the brother of the Lord (Mark 6:3, Galatians 1:19); and James, the son of “the other” Mary (Matthew 27:56, etc.). Depending on what scholar you ask, two of these — or even all three — may refer to the same person.

Saint James the Just

Saint James the Just.

In history we say that there are lumpers and splitters. Catholic biblical scholars, especially the early ones, tended to be lumpers, desiring to make connections in Scripture, identify people and places with each other, and generally to lump ideas together. Protestants, on the other hand, perhaps by their very nature, are splitters, inclined to tear apart and question what is traditional and speculative and what Catholics have put together, especially where there lacks explicit evidence. The study of the biblical Jameses is a prime example of these tendencies.

There is very little known about the three other Jameses, aside from the few times they are mentioned in Scripture. Both Catholics and Protestants tend to agree that James, the brother of the Lord, was known in the Early Church as James the Just, and was the first bishop of Jerusalem (Galatians 2:1–13) and the author of the Epistle of James.

Catholic tradition records little about the Apostle James the Less, the son of Alphaeus. Orthodox tradition tradition holds that he first ministered in southwestern Palestine, then in Lower Egypt, where he met his martyrdom at Ostracine. Beyond this point, there is much Catholic conjecture.

Madonna and Child, by Carlo Maratta (c. 1660).

Madonna and Child, by Carlo Maratta (c. 1660).

First, Catholics and Orthodox do not believe that James the Just, the “brother” (ἀδελφός) of the Lord, was actually the brother of the Lord, or the son of Mary, who never bore another child. There is scriptural evidence to support this. When Joseph and Mary journeyed with the boy Jesus to Jerusalem (Luke 2:41–51), there is no mention of any other children. When Jesus, from the Cross, entrusted his mother Mary to John (John 19:25–27), it would make little sense for John to take Mary into his home if she had other children living. There are at least two views, then, of who the “brethren of the Lord” are: Either they are children of Joseph by a prior marriage (tradition holds Joseph to have been an older man and widower), or they are other close kinsmen of Jesus, perhaps cousins. The Aramaic language has no word for “cousin,” and used the word for “brother” instead, which could connote any relative. According to this view, when the Gospel was recorded in Greek, it followed this linguistic convention (the word ἀδελφός in Greek likewise can connote any relative).

St. James the Less, by El Greco.

St. James the Less, by El Greco (c. 1595).

And with this, the plot thickens considerably. If the “brethren of the Lord,” and our James the Just, are in fact Jesus’s cousins, who are their parents? Catholic scholars, beginning with the earliest of the Church Fathers, have made inferences based on these three verses of Scripture:

  • “. . . but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” (John 19:25)
  • “. . . among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.” (Matthew 27:56)
  • “There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger (ὁ μικρός, young, small, less) and of Joses, and Salome.” (Mark 15:40).

If we suppose, as appears to be the case, that all three verses refer to the same group of women who witnessed the Crucifixion, then it appears:

  1. Mary the mother of James and Joses (or Joseph) in Matthew and Mark, is the same woman as Mary the wife of Clopas in John.

  2. Salome in Mark is the same woman as the mother of the sons of Zebedee in Matthew.

  3. Depending on how one punctuates the Greek of John, either Mary the wife of Clopas (#1) or Salome the wife of Zebedee (#2) is the sister of our Lord’s mother in John. (The former would require that Mary had a sister named Mary, but this would not be unheard of, since Mary, or Miriam, was also a very common Jewish name, and one or both of the women may have had other names.)

  4. That would mean that either James and John, the sons of Zebedee and Salome, are the cousins of Jesus; or that James and Joses (or Joseph), the sons of Clopas and Mary, are the cousins of Jesus. The former would make some sense, since Jesus clearly had a close relationship with James and John, and entrusted his mother to John, who would have been her nephew.

  5. But the latter makes possibly more sense, since we are told that two of Jesus’s “brethren” were named James and Joses (Mark 6:3) or Joseph (Matthew 13:55). Mark refers, at the Crucifixion, to the “mother of James and Joses,” and Matthew refers to the “mother of James and Joseph.” It seems remarkable that Mark would spell the latter name Joses (Ἰωσῆ) both in reference to the Lord’s “brother” and to the second of the latter pair, when he was perfectly capable of also using the name Joseph (Ἰωσήφ) (Mark 15:43). It would appear, then, that this James and Joses, the Lord’s “brethren,” were in fact the children of Clopas and Mary.

  6. We can presume from the fact that the Evangelists identified “the mother of James and Joses” that James and Joses were people with whom the Early Church was familiar. Certainly the Early Church was familiar with James the Just, bishop of Jerusalem. If this James the Less (ὁ μικρός) is in fact implied to be James the brother of the Lord, then it seems James the Just and James the Less are the same person.

But is this James the Less (ὁ μικρός) the same man as the Apostle often referred to as James the Less? What of this last James, the son of Alphaeus? Some Catholic scholars, in their endless lumping, have suggested that Clopas (Κλωπᾶς), the father of James and Joses above, and Alphaeus (Ἀλφαῖος) are in fact the same man — meaning that all three of the obscure Jameses, James the Just the brother of our Lord, James the son of Clopas and Mary, and the Apostle James the Less, are one and the same man. The supposition that undergirds this is that Clopas had two names. Some have suggested that Clopas and Alphaeus were different transliterations of the same Aramaic name; but this doesn’t seem likely (the difficulty of this issue is discussed in Clopas’s article in the Catholic Encyclopedia). A secondary name, though, isn’t out of the question.

Apostle Judas Thaddeus, by Van Dyck

Apostle Judas Thaddeus, by Anthonis van Dyck (c. 1620).

Further, we know that Jude, author of the Epistle of Jude, is the brother of James (Jude 1), certainly James the Just, making him also the “brother” of the Lord, the Judas mentioned by Mark and Matthew. Catholic scholars have also identified this Jude with the Apostle Judas Thaddeus (Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, Luke 6:16). Most recent English translations of the Bible (including Catholic ones) translate Jude in Luke’s lists (here and in Acts 1:13) as “Judas son of James” — but the Greek actually reads Ἰούδας Ἰακώβου, literally Judas of James, with no relation made explicit. Jude may have been so identified by relation to his brother, the better-known James the Just, since James had already been listed; and traditional Catholic translations (the Douay-Rheims) read Judas brother of James. Jude likewise identifies himself by relation to his brother James in his epistle.

St. Simon the Zealot, by Rubens

St. Simon the Zealot, by Peter Paul Rubens (c. 1611).

But we Catholics aren’t quite done lumping. The last of Jesus’s “brethren” (Mark 6:3) was named Simon. Wasn’t there another Apostle named Simon, Simon the Zealot? James son of Alphaeus, Judas Thaddeus, and Simon the Zealot (or the Cananaean) are always listed together in the lists of the Apostles. Some Catholic scholars have taken that as a hint, together with the coincidence that Jesus also had “brethren” named James, Judas, and Simon, and supposed that the two sets might be connected. They have identified Simon the Zealot as another “brother” of the Lord. Further, some have also identified him with Simeon (or Simon), who succeeded James the Just (his brother?) as bishop of Jerusalem.

Paul lends some credence to the notion that at least two of the Lord’s brothers were members of the apostolic party: “Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?” (1 Corinthians 9:5). In increasing order of importance, Paul lists: (1) the other apostles, (2) the brothers of the Lord, and (3) Cephas, or Peter, the chief Apostle. Together, this statement seems to refer to the Twelve, and includes “the brothers of the Lord” among them.

All in all, it seems as if Jesus’s evangelic enterprise may have been something of a family affair. Two sets of brothers, Simon Peter and Andrew, and James and John; and possibly three of His own “brethren.” Of course, none of this is verified or can ever be verified. But it is traditions like these, enriching to the story and harmless if untrue, that make our Catholic faith full, rich, and beautiful.

On this Rock: An Analysis of Matthew 16:18 in the Greek

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St. Peter

Peter Paul Rubens. St. Peter. c. 1611. Oil on canvas.

One of the Roman Catholic Church’s chief scriptural supports for the authority of St. Peter as the leading Apostle, who would become the bishop of Rome — whom we would eventually refer to as the first pope — is the verses of Matthew 16:17-19:

And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’

This is also a favorite passage of anti-Catholics to pick apart. But with even a basic understanding of the ancient languages, the wordplay that Jesus and the Evangelist were implementing here becomes clear: These verses cannot be interpreted any other way but as an explicit declaration of Peter’s authority. And they never were, until the time of Luther.

Let’s look at the Greek, especially of the critical verse 18 (Greek text from NA27; see also, in English, BibleGateway, Bible.CC, New Advent):

κἀγὼ δέ σοι λέγω ὅτι σὺ εἶ Πέτρος, καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ οἰκοδομήσω μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, καὶ πύλαι ἅδου οὐ κατισχύσουσιν αὐτῆς.

Now, I don’t expect my readers to have a lot of Greek. If you do, I am delighted — but I’m here to make this as simple as possible. Here it is transliterated into Roman characters:

kagō de soi legō hoti su ei Petros, kai epi tautē tē petra oikodomēsō mou tēn ekklēsian, kai pulai hadou ou katischusousin autēs.

And one more time, all together: this time cribbed so you can understand it.

κἀγὼ [I, emphatically, in response to Peter’s delaration] δέ [and, also, postpositive: together with first word, and I or I also] σοι [2nd person singular dative pronoun, to you] λέγω [(I) say] ὅτι [that] σὺ [2nd person singular nominative pronoun, you, emphatically] εἶ [2nd person singular present active, are] Πέτρος [Peter], καὶ [and] ἐπὶ [preposition on, upon] ταύτῃ [this] τῇ πέτρᾳ [rock] οἰκοδομήσω [first person singular future active I will build, as in building a house] μου [my (lit. of me)] τὴν ἐκκλησίαν [church (lit. a calling out, a meeting, an assembly — but concretely and universally in Christian lit. refers to the Church)], καὶ [and] πύλαι [(the) gates] ἅδου [of hades] οὐ [negative particle, not] κατισχύσουσιν [3rd person plural future active, will overpower] αὐτῆς [it].

Now, the first thing to note about this is that Jesus addresses Peter in the second person singular: that is, he says you and not y’all. The distinction between the second-person singular and plural personal pronouns has died out in modern English; technically, the singular personal pronouns (thou, thy, thee) have died out and been replaced by the plural (ye, your, you). This is why the Southern U.S. y’all will save the English language. But back to the point: Jesus addresses Peter in the singular you — the King James’ Thou art Peter actually preserves the important distinction. So there can be no question that Jesus is speaking to Peter and to Peter alone here; not to all the Apostles; not to all Christians.

Second, and more important: the wordplay. The name “Peter” — Petros in Greek, Petrus in Latin — translates as “Rock.” Jesus is giving Simon a new name, Peter or Rock, in reference to his firmness or steadfastness.

And on this Rock I will build my Church. “You are Rock, and on this Rock I will build my Church.” That’s the proper way to understand the statement, had it been spoken in English.

Now, the common anti-Catholic refutation of this is thus (first put forward by Luther himself): the Evangelist uses different words in the Greek for Peter and Rock. You are Peter (Πέτρος, Petros) and upon this Rock (πέτρα, petra) I will build my Church. Not only are the two words different, but they are different genders — Petros is masculine and petra is feminine — and they have supposedly, according to the Protestant argument, different meanings in Greek. A petros is a small rock or a piece of rock; a petra is the bedrock or a massive rock formation. Therefore clearly, Jesus wasn’t referring to the same rock in both cases, so the argument goes.

There are several reasons why this argument doesn’t work. First of all, the context. Jesus had asked the disciples who they said he was: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, some other prophet? And in one of the most dramatic moments of the Gospel, Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ. And Jesus in turn confesses Peter: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to you . . .” The episode would not make any sense if Jesus had said, “I rename you Peter, a steadfast Rock; and on this (other) rock I will build my Church.”

Not only does that not make sense — but Jesus doesn’t say “other” — he says ταύτῃ, this rock. And there doesn’t seem to be any other rock, any petra present. The common Protestant argument is that petra here refers to Peter’s confession or Peter’s faith. But if that were the case, why the wordplay on Peter’s name? Even more so, why the wordplay without any clarification of the ambiguous metaphor? It seems unlike Matthew to let such an ambiguous statement go without explanation, who in other places is careful to provide explanations for the fulfillment of prophecies (Matthew 3), difficult parables (Matthew 13), and foreign words (Matthew 27:46). The reason he doesn’t here is because to Matthew, and to his earliest readers, it wasn’t ambiguous.

In fact, the literary structure of Jesus’s proclamation mirrors Peter’s exactly: “You are the Christ”; “You are Peter.” And Jesus’s other pronouncements here are perhaps even more important, more indicative of Peter’s singular authority, than His pronouncement of Peter as “Rock”. Jesus gives three separate blessings directed to Peter and Peter alone that leave no doubt of His intention to invest Peter specifically with authority:

  1. You (Peter) are “Rock,” and on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

  2. I will give you (Peter) the keys of the kingdom of heaven [mirroring “the gates of hell”].

  3. Whatever you (Peter) bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven [linked implicitly to the “keys”].

Further, there is no evidence, beyond the assertion itself, that the meanings of petros and petra are as distinct as Protestants argue. No scholarly lexicon I have consulted, in particular neither the LSJ for Classical Greek nor the BDAG for Koine, supports the definiton of petros as merely a small rock or piece of rock. The words seem, rather, to be nearly synonymous. If there is a distinction between them at all, it is between petra, a great mass of rock, and petros, stone as a monumental building material — for building, say, a Church.

But most important: there are perfectly good reasons why Matthew used two different words here, Petros and petra: this was the only way to compose the statement so that it would make sense in Greek.

  1. Peter’s name in Greek is Petros, not Petra. Why didn’t they call him Petra in Greek? Because Petra is a feminine noun, and Peter is a male. By the time the Gospels were written, Petros had been his Greek name for decades.
  2. Even supposing the Protestant argument about the different meanings of the words petros and petra were true (all evidence is that this is an anti-Catholic invention) — Jesus wouldn’t have said “on this petros I will build my Church,” to make the statement in Greek seem less ambiguous (to us), because that wasn’t what He meant. He meant “I will build my Church on this bedrock,” this unmovable foundation, not this piece of rock.
  3. Greek is an inflected language, meaning that the endings of words change depending on the grammatical function in which they are used. For example, πέτρος (petros), πέτρον (petron), and πετρῷ (petro[i]) are all the very same word. So variations in the endings of words with the same stem seem quite natural to the Greek mind, and the difference between petros and petra would have seemed much less significant than it does to an English-speaker. In fact, this type of wordplay between similar-sounding words, called paronomasia, was common in ancient Greek.
  4. Jesus wasn’t speaking Greek at all. Scholars are pretty certain that in His day-to-day life and teachings, Jesus spoke Aramaic. The Gospels quote Jesus in Aramaic for special dramatic emphasis: “Talitha cumi” (Mark 5:41), “Abba, Father” (Mark 14:36), “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (Mark 15.34).
  5. So if Jesus was speaking Aramaic, the words for Peter and Rock — Petros and petra — would have been the same word: Kepha (כיפא‎).
    “You are Kepha and on this Kepha I will build my Church,” is what Jesus would have said (pretending that the rest of the sentence is in Aramaic, which I don’t know, and you probably don’t either).
  6. The Aramaic Kepha (כיפא‎) was rendered into Greek as Kephas (Κηφᾶς). Why didn’t Matthew just use that in both cases? Because it would have been as awkward as my sentence above, saying most of the sentence in Greek and a couple of words in Aramaic, and then having to explain it. Matthew’s readers apparently didn’t know Aramaic — or at least, if the book was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic as some of the Church Fathers suggest, whoever translated it into Greek didn’t expect his readers would know Aramaic, and provided a crib for the Aramaic phrases.

To further confirm the Catholic interpretation — it’s not a Catholic interpretation; at least not an invention or reinterpretation of the modern Catholic Church as anti-Catholics charge. This is the way this Scripture has been interpreted since the very earliest biblical commentators:

“. . . I think it my duty to consult the chair of Peter, and to turn to a Church whose faith has been praised by Paul . . . The fruitful soil of Rome, when it receives the pure seed of the Lord, bears fruit an hundredfold . . . My words are spoken to the successor of the fisherman, to the disciple of the Cross. As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none but your blessedness, that is with the chair of Peter. For this, I know, is the Rock on which the Church is built! This is the house where alone the Paschal Lamb can be rightly eaten. This is the Ark of Noah, and he who is not found in it shall perish when the flood prevails.”

—St. Jerome, To Pope Damasus, Epistle 15:1-2 (A.D. 375)

“Number the bishops from the See of Peter itself. And in that order of Fathers see who has succeeded whom. That is the rock against which the gates of hell do not prevail.”

—St. Augustine, Psalm against the Party of Donatus, 18 (A.D. 393)

“Wherefore the most holy and blessed Leo, archbishop of the great and elder Rome, through us, and through this present most holy synod together with the thrice blessed and all-glorious Peter the Apostle, who is the rock and foundation of the Catholic Church, and the foundation of the orthodox faith, hath stripped him of the episcopate, and hath alienated from him all hieratic worthiness. Therefore let this most holy and great synod sentence the before mentioned Dioscorus to the canonical penalties.”

—Council of Chalcedon, Session III (A.D. 451)

To me, this makes a rock-solid (that’s petra-solid) case: In this verse, there is no doubt that Jesus is declaring Peter to be the Rock on which He would build his Church. Seeing these words in stone did more to move me to this truth, and toward the Catholic Church, than almost anything else: my banner above is a photograph I took of this same declaration, in Latin, around the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, over the high altar and St. Peter’s tomb.

See also: Early Testimonies to St. Peter’s Ministry in Rome

The Sacred Heart of Jesus

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Sacred Heart

Pompeo Batoni. Il Sacro Cuore (The Sacred Heart) (1740).

I feel like I’ve been on the offensive a lot lately. I apologize for that. I’ve made three posts in the past two weeks against sola scriptura — and I have to confess, it’s been partly out of annoyance at the closed-mindedness the doctrine engenders. Forgive me for that. My deeper aim, in this blog and even in those posts, is to extend to my Protestant brethren the fullness and beauty that the Apostolic Tradition of the Church has to offer.

(For what it’s worth, that last sola scriptura post had been on the back burner half-formed since I posted the first two, so I decided I needed to finish it. I also have another rather critical post I began writing last year sometime, before I even entered the Church, about church membership, that I put down because I decided it wasn’t the tone I wanted my blog to take. I may look at it again sometime to see if there’s anything to salvage.)

Today is the Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, and June is the Month of the Sacred Heart. The Sacred Heart is a devotion to the wounded physical heart of Jesus as a representation of His all-surpassing divine and human love for all humanity. This devotion — really the idea of devotions to things other than God Himself — is a new, rather strange concept to my evangelical brain. Isn’t devotion to or worship of an object idolatry? Well, no. Idolatry is worship of something as a god that isn’t God. Veneration of the saints is not idolatry because it’s not worship. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is not idolatry because the Blessed Sacrament really is Jesus. Likewise devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is not idolatry because it is an aspect of Jesus: it’s the love of Christ for all humanity, the love of God for all the world; and God is love (1 John 4:16).

Devotion to the Sacred Heart has a long tradition, with roots in Scripture and in the Church Fathers. I have an excellent book (picked up on one my thrifting quests) about the history and theology of the Sacred Heart, Heart of the Redeemer by Timothy T. O’Donnell, S.T.D. The earliest Christians associated the water flowing from the side of Christ at his Crucifixion with the “rivers of living water” flowing “from his heart” (John 7:37-38). . . .

[And a sidenote: I’m thrilled that the ESV and some other newer Bible translations, even Protestant ones, have translated this verse as “out of his heart.” Traditionally, that Greek word, κοιλία (koilia — in the phrase, ἐκ τῆς κοιλίας), has been rendered “belly” or “bosom”: according to the LSJ, it is a common Greek noun that refers to a cavity of the body, especially the belly or abdomen, but also any body cavity, ventricle, chamber, such as in heart, lungs, liver, brain: figuratively, the innermost center of being and consciousness of a person. It is the same word used for Mary’s womb in Luke 1:42. The Hebrew word used in Proverbs 4:23, the essence of which John 7:38 seems to follow, is לב (lêb), and most certainly refers to the heart (translated καρδία [kardia] in the Septuagint). In short, I think it’s pretty fantastic that the ESV translators, in translating a verse that refers to Old Testament prophecy, considered the Hebrew context of the words in their translation decisions from Greek. Jesus more than likely would have been speaking Aramaic, and may have quoted the passage in Aramaic rather than Hebrew; though especially the Evangelists Matthew and John would have been familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures. Both the Evangelists and our modern translators had to consider all these things in translating to and from Greek.]

St. Bernard

St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

. . . And the Church Fathers saw this wound, this flow of blood and water from the side of Christ, from His heart, as a symbol that the Heart of Jesus is the source and fountain of the living water that gives us grace, salvation, and the Sacraments (O’Donnell 49). Jesus’s wounds, his suffering for our sake, became a visible symbol of His love for us. Over the centuries of tradition, increasing devotion to the Heart of Jesus developed. There are so many wonderful passages I could quote (this book is really amazing), but here are some of my favorites. From St. Bernard (1090–1153):

The secret of His Heart is laid bare in the wounds of his body. One can easily read in them the mystery of God’s infinite goodness and merciful tenderness which came down to us like a dawning from on wounds. How could you indeed, Lord, show us more clearly than by your wounds that You are indeed ‘full of goodness and mercy abounding in love.’

From David of Augsburg (d. 1272) (O’Donnell 101):

From the burning Heart of Jesus flows his blood, hot with love. Jesus showed us from the Cross his faithful heart, glowing with love, since the death of our souls touched him more nearly than the death of his body. Ah, dearest Lord Jesus Christ, what great love and faithfulness wilt thou show when thou displayest thy riches and openest thy Heart to thy beloved friends!

The devotions grow longer, more elaborate, more flowery, until in the late seventeenth century, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a French nun and mystic, experienced a series of visions of the suffering Christ, in which He revealed his Sacred Heart to her, and set her own heart aflame with the fire of His. It is from her revelations and her writings that our modern conception of the Sacred Heart has proceeded. Devotion to the Sacred Heart spread throughout France, and gradually beyond its borders. Pope Pius IX first extended the Feast of the Sacred Heart to the entire Church in 1856. In 1899, Pope Leo XIII consecrated the entire human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, following the visions of Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart, in whose visions Christ Himself requested the consecration.

So in short: The Sacred Heart is, to put it simply, an ancient, God-inspired Christian meme. So much in tradition works this way: a writer has a revelation, and then another writer picks it up and elaborates upon it, until over time, a whole tradition of devotion and literature develops around it. No matter how you might feel about the personal revelations of these nuns, it is the symbol of the Sacred Heart that is important: the symbol of Christ’s divine and human love for the whole world, that has been a longstanding Christian tradition and object of devotion. To dedicate oneself to the Sacred Heart is to dedicate oneself to live in and for the love of Christ.