June
16, 2023
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Art courtesy of Sister Doris Klein, CSA
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The story is told that
once a young boy was about to have open-heart surgery. To prepare him the
surgeon said, “Tomorrow I will look at your heart.” Smiling, the boy
interrupted, “You’ll find Jesus there.” Ignoring his remark, the surgeon
continued, “After I have seen your heart I will try to repair the
damage.” Again, the boy insisted. “You are going to find Jesus in
my heart.”
The surgeon who had suffered losses in his own family and was still in pain
from a failed marriage, felt very distant from God. He replied in a chilling
tone, “No, what I’ll find is damaged tissue, constricted arteries, and weakened
muscle.”
The next day he opened the boy’s chest and exposed his heart. It was
worse than he expected – a ravaged aorta, torn tissue, swollen muscles and
arteries. There was no hope of a cure, not even the possibility of a
transplant. His icy anger at God began to surface as he thought, “Where
is God? Why did God do this? Why is God letting this boy suffer and
cursing him with an early death?”
As he gazed at the boy’s heart, he suddenly thought of the pierced heart of
Jesus, and it seemed to him that the boy and Jesus shared one heart, a heart
that was suffering for all those in the world experiencing pain and loss; a
heart that was redeeming the world by love.
Struck with awe at such goodness, such redemptive, unconditional love, tears
began rolling down the surgeon’s cheeks, hot tears of compassion for the little
boy. Later, when the child awoke, he whispered, “Did you see my
heart?” “Yes,” said the surgeon. “What did you find?” the boy
asked. The surgeon replied, “I found Jesus there.”
The heart can be understood as a physical part of each of us – that hidden yet
vital organ that circulates the full human blood supply three times per minute
and whose hundred thousand beats a day are often taken for granted. The
heart is the very core of a person. When that very center is deeply
affected, one’s whole way of thinking about the world, one’s whole way of
feeling it, of being in it is profoundly altered. As in our opening
story, the doctor experienced a conversion of heart – a healing from
heartlessness to heart-fullness. And the child – who was all heart and shared
in the heart of Jesus – had a heart filled with redemptive and unconditional love.
Today’s feast is the celebration of the “enlarged heart” of God as it was
enfleshed in the heart of Jesus through the womb of Mary – a heart filled and
overflowing with unconditional love and mercy.
Today is not necessarily a feast of our devotion to the heart of Jesus, but
more it is a celebration of God’s devotion to us by offering us a heart of love
beyond our comprehension, a heart of love beyond any Hallmark card expression,
and a heart full of love that is unfathomable. Our God’s love is tender; Our
God is totally in love with us, and desires to be of one heart with us.
For as John writes: God is Love!
In our Gospel today, Jesus reveals to us that his heart is humble and invites
us to find rest within his heart. Jesus lived love and mercy throughout
his ministry as he encountered the marginalized, the poor, the forgotten, and
so many more.
In Scripture we find a number of examples of how his love was lived out. . .
• Let the children come to me . . .then he embraced them and blessed them,
placing his hands on them
• At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them.
• Moved with pity, Jesus touched their eyes and immediately they received
their sight.
• (Rich man) Jesus looking at him loved him.
So what is the good news for us today?
Let us through our prayer imagine ourselves resting in the heart of God hearing
the heartbeat of God in the intimacy of our own prayer.
(Nouwen)- “when we come to hear the heartbeat of God in the intimacy
of our prayer, we realize that God’s heart embraces all the sufferings of the
world. We come to see that through Jesus Christ these burdens have become
a light burden which we are invited to carry. . . It is in the heart of God
that we come to understand the true nature of human suffering and come to know
our mission to alleviate this suffering not in our own name, but in the name of
Jesus.”
For God’s heart goes out to us and God’s love is always there for us – so
let us meet God heart to heart in our time of quiet and pondering of life . . .
Closing: Reflections
from Macrina Wiederkehr’s experience of the heart of God in her prayer . . .
Like lightning at dawn – the All-Powerful One came
electrifying, energizing, frightening, shattering, crashing into my morning
prayer!
Totally unprepared for this kind of interruption,
I froze on my knees both in wonder and terror.
There was no morning silence left,
no comforting darkness to enfold me
only those flashes of light that make hiding impossible.
But this? Oh, this was awful!
God stood there with terrible, penetrating loving eyes, saying only:
Your love is too small!
Standing that close to truth felt uncomfortable, unbearable and I tried
to hide my face the way I often do when truth gets too close.
I tried to hide the pieces of my terribly divided heart.
But then the lightning came again.
And God was standing there even closer than before
Holding the pieces of my heart with such tenderness
still saying, Your love is too small.
I took the pieces back with reverence
My tears proclaiming the truth of all I felt.
There was no pressure, no force
just the God of morning asking for my love.
And now, every time I see those flashes
in the northern sky I hear again, a voice
saying simply, Your love is too small.
And I weep; I weep at the possibility of who I could be.
(From Seasons of Your Heart)
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| Art by Joseph Fanelli (1993) |
