The Jesuits and the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Now that I've digested Leo XIII, Annum Sacrum and Pius XII, Haurietis Aquas, I read the letter Pope Benedict XVI wrote on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the encyclical Haurietis Aquas. This letter reaffirms that this particular devotion hold importance in the lives of Christians. 

What interested me was that this letter was addressed to the Superior General of the Jesuits.  Why?  There are religious orders that arose to honor this particular devotion. The Fathers of the Sacred Heart, for one.  There are others.  Why was this letter addressed to the Jesuits?

After some google research, I learned that the Jesuits have been the historical custodians of the devotion to the Sacred Heart.  Also, in one of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque's visions, she mentions the Jesuits in particular, to spread the devotion.  Of course, Jesus' Sacred Heart is for all.

Today we need to draw closer to His Heart.  There are Divine treasures of grace bestowed on those who unite themselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, come into our hearts!

Reasons for Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Haurietis Aquas, an encyclical by Pius XII, gives six reasons why the Church gives the highest form of worship to the Heart of Jesus.

1. We recognize that His Heart is hypostatically united to the Person of the Divine Word. This is an article of faith defined in the general Council of Ephesus and the Second Council of Constantinople. 
2. Jesus' Heart, more than all the other members of His body, is the natural sign and symbol of His boundless love for us. Leo XIII told us it is "the symbol and express image of the infinite love of Jesus Christ that moves us to love in return."
3. God's love for us is proclaimed and insisted upon in the Old and New Testaments by the kind of images which strongly arouse our emotion.
4. Jesus had a human body and heart but Jesus Christ is hypostatically united to the Word with divine charity and infinite love itself which Jesus shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
5. It is the perfect symbol of divine love.
6. Since, therefore, Sacred Scripture and the official teaching of the Catholic faith instruct us that all things find their complete harmony and order in the most holy soul of Jesus Christ, and that He has manifestly directed His threefold love for the securing of our redemption, it unquestionably follows that we can contemplate and honor the Heart of the divine Redeemer as a symbolic image of His love and a witness of our redemption and, at the same time, as a sort of mystical ladder by which we mount to the embrace of "God our Savior."     Paragraph 58