Pope Leo XIV visited a special relic of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini in Italy on June 20. The relic is actually her heart and was sent after her death to her hometown in Codogno, Italy.
During his visit, he referenced her deep love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus:
Her soul was at once contemplative and active; she was immersed in the love of the Heart of Christ, and this gave her an extraordinary capacity for work and strength of spirit, in keeping with the Pauline motto she had chosen for the Institute: “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13).
What many people do not know is that Mother Cabrini experienced what some call a ""transverberation" of her heart, similar to that of St. Teresa of Avila.
Except in Mother Cabrini's case, her heart was "exchanged" for Jesus' heart.
Exchange of hearts
The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus explain what happened on their website, using the words Mother Cabrini wrote:
“While one soul was bursting out with holy affections toward Jesus, He showed her His most lovable Heart, saying to her: 'My beloved, your heart is mine, I want it for myself for ever, and therefore I remove it from your breast so that from now on you may work only with mine.'"
The miraculous part about her heart is that this mystical experience was physically "felt" by Mother Cabrini in the years after it:
"And in so saying, that soul felt it being taken out of her breast with great force and then for more than a year she felt unusual tremors in that part about which even the doctors did not know what to say. From that point also she felt that soul as if it were languishing with love for her beloved, especially whenever she stood before the image of the Sacred Heart who always seemed to be talking to her and tenderly looking at her.”
In a spiritual sense her heart relic that is on display is really "Jesus' heart," for she loved all those she encountered, not with her heart, but with Jesus' heart and with his love.
What happened to her is really what we should all desire to happen, exchanging our hearts with Jesus, wanting his Heart to beat within us and animate our every action.
