Arm’s Length Christology: The Mujerista Consensual Sacred Heart of Christ

By Kaya McCluskey.

Two cultures collided in my home of origin. Growing up, I experienced Catholic Mexican family members depending on the collective. It felt wrong not to include the whole family at every gathering, not to mention heaven. On the other hand, white evangelical culture preached exclusively individual salvation. Some family members might be going to heaven and others might not, depending on who prayed the right words. Weaving together these conflicting cultural and spiritual norms, moment by moment, exposed tension between the Latina collective and white individual security, which I began to paradoxically view as different ways of confronting what happens after we die. Doubting mystical deliverance, my evangelical fear of being left behind was wrapped in the Catholic guilt of sin management, creating a liminal context outside the Catholic tradition of accountable confession within a predominantly white culture that lacks rituals of redemptive repair. From the clash of these histories, I search for scattered pieces.

I first encountered the image of the Sacred Heart in my abuela’s kitchen, seated amongst family members. Imagine a gentle, femininely featured male figure with wispy hair and delicate fingers who miraculously reveals his heart, and holds it in his palm. Since that time, three women have influenced my thinking about what my brother reminds me was a holographic image: Marcella Altheus-Reid, a Brazilian theologian who wrote queer and indecent theologies from the margins; María Isasi-Díaz, a Catholic theologian born in the U.S. to Cuban immigrants; and Mary Margaret Alocoque, a 17th century French Visitationist nun.

Mary Margaret originally created a black and white valentine Sacred Heart icon in response to intimate visions of Jesus experienced in her bedroom. Her devotion gave us an example of feminine heterosexual spiritual amorous love. A way to relate to the resurrected Christ with our eyes wide open to community rather than closed with our heads bowed. Althaus-Reid criticized mujeristas and liberation theologians for ignoring the sexuality of Jesus and Mary, the mother of God. Yet, Mary Margaret’s visions iconize Christ’s sexuality. Her Sacred Heart devotion is creative, erotic, and emotional.

In her book, Indecent Theology, Altheus Reid notes that Latinas gravitate toward religious images over religious writing. Isai-Díaz defines outward ways of relating to oneself, others, and Dios as lo cotidiano– the everyday. I think both would agree that icons are essential to the integration of bodies and beliefs. Lo cotidiano is a moda de ser, a way of being, rooted in mujerista theology. Mujerista identity grows out of lo cotidiano as a lifeforce that works toward goals of liberation specific to the mujerista and her Latina sisters. Sharing a meal before an effeminate Jesucristo holding the Sacred Heart is mujerista because food and visual memory are just two elements of Latina context that provide anchors for resistance as we fight for respect for our full humanity. The power of the Sacred Heart flows from acknowledgement of the image itself, its history, the divinity it represents, the surrounding culture, and the justice of consent.

18th century Spanish Jesuits recreated images of the Sacred Heart in Latin America alongside an Italian painting by Pompeo Batoni. This painting may be interpreted as an adapted version of Mary Margaret’s vision, morphing into a white Jesus, with gold light glinting off light brown hair. It displays the religious arousal of Mary Margaret’s visions. Jesus’ bedroom eyes gaze with desire, and his posture reveals a manner of undressing. The devotee is visually invited to peek inside his shirt in contemporary images. A suggestive Sacred Heart may cause a viewer to blush, but Jesucristo makes no advances on his own.

Though whitewashed as an accomplice of colonization, Jesus’ posture ironically pauses for consent, a vulnerable action. In any other circumstance, a removed or exposed heart would be an emergency. Bleeding is sustainable for Sacred Heart Jesus because the image depicts a resurrected Christ. Jesus in my grandparent’s kitchen conveyed the drama, fervor, and patient, suffering love Mary Margaret hoped to evoke. Holographic heart on fire, always bleeding, always desiring, but never demanding.

Consent and religion point to ethics. Isasi-Díaz asserts that as children, when we begin to understand Jesus as good, it is not from what we are taught in Sunday school or the Bible. The meaning of the Sacred Heart hanging in my abuela’s kitchen is not solely from the image itself but from the relationships I experienced at her table. Visceral, embodied knowledge of the goodness of a plate filled with frijoles, tamales, arroz, junto con un vaso de leche. The sparkling gaze and posture of this holographic Jesus formed my conscience and Christology on the deepest possible level– the core of my heart. My cousins sitting next to me, their gold and brown shoulders touching my own, my uncles laughing while my aunts rolled their eyes. I learned right from wrong here. Across the table on the wall Jesus offered his heart at arm’s length and I received it, glancing up with every bite of beans mixed with rice.

Latinas know Jesucristo on a close, collective level, like the experience of sitting at my grandma’s table. Inversely, white or male or evangelical interpretations of Jesus do not consider the everyday of Latinas. We suffer the reality of sexist, Hispanic, collective, daily oppression. Despite this, we do not crucify other interpretations of Jesus. Jesus’ Sagrado Corazón is a mujerista image of the savior, and intimacy is based on consent. As Marcella Althaus-Reid observes, “without consent, the act of submission is indeed meaningless, and so it is with salvation.” Jesus’ Sacred Heart visually demonstrates consent, consciousness, and embodied faith. I receive the Sacred Heart with my eyes and mouth open – as I did eating my abuela’s food. Jesucristo offers his heart at arm’s length, while Latinas – abandoned by God, oppressed by doctrines or excluded from religious traditions – invite Jesus to believe in us as we believe in the Sacred Heart within one another.

Kaya McCluskey (she/her) is an artist from the United States currently residing in Nayarit, Mexico. She has a Studio Art degree with a minor in Latin American Culture & Society from Colorado College. Currently a student in The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology low residency degree program, she embodies mixed Mexican American identity with commitments on both sides of the border. She finds herself in stories of Latinx belonging, curious about popular religion as experienced through art and rituals in everyday life.