Sacred Heart of Jesus, Ezekiel 36:26 Wall Art

In the painting

This is a half-length portrait, closer than most of our pieces. Jesus looks down with his eyes closed, long brown hair falling to his shoulders. A dusty red mantle hangs from one shoulder and a slate blue one from the other, over a white robe. His right hand points toward his chest; the left is cupped just beneath it.

There, the heart is painted in warm red and gold: circled by a crown of thorns, crowned by flames, with a small cross rising out of the fire. Pale rays spread from it across the robe. The words “A new heart also will I give you” and the reference Ezekiel 36:26 are lettered in sepia above his head.

What does Ezekiel 36:26 mean, and why the Sacred Heart?

Ezekiel was a priest carried off to Babylon with the exiles of Judah, early in the sixth century before Christ. Chapter 36 is a promise to a scattered, discouraged people: God will gather them, cleanse them and bring them home. The full verse reads, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”

In Hebrew thought, the heart is less the seat of feelings than of will and understanding, the place where a person decides. A “stony heart” is one that no longer responds. God does not ask Israel to repair it; he promises to replace it. Christians see that promise fulfilled in the gift of the Spirit, and Jeremiah 31 speaks in a similar way of a law written on the heart.

The image of Christ showing his heart comes from a long Catholic devotion that grew widely after the visions of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, a Visitation nun at Paray-le-Monial in France, in the 1670s. Each symbol carries meaning: the thorns for the suffering caused by sin, the flames for a love that keeps burning, the cross for the Passion. The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart falls on the Friday after the feast of Corpus Christi, and June is traditionally devoted to it.

Setting that image beside Ezekiel's words makes a quiet point: the new heart promised to us is modeled on his.

Where to hang it

Some Catholic families enthrone the Sacred Heart in their home, placing the image in a central room and consecrating the household to it; this print can serve that purpose. It is also chosen for confirmation, when the promise of a new spirit feels especially fitting, and for a bedroom or prayer corner.