The Matter of the Heart
The Matter of the Heart
Touching and Seeing
This chapter explores the relation between touching and seeing, as well as matter and spirit, in terms of several different moments in the controversial history of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In English, the verb behold suggests this relationship between sight and touch. To see can mean “to want to touch”; hence, religious seeing indicates encountering the sacred in material terms. On that note, seeing the heart of Jesus in the portrait connected viewers materially to the sacred by engaging them in a penitential economy—the tangibility of the heart beckoned a devout response: repay Jesus for the expense of offenses against him.
Keywords: Sacred Heart of Jesus, religious seeing, sacred, penitential economy, devotion, touching, seeing
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