Mark 10:45

Tag: heart

  • By Heart, From the Heart

    By Heart, From the Heart

    Sunday of the 6th Week in Ordinary Time

    Sirach 15:15-20; Psalm 119:34; 1 Corinthians 2:6-10; Matthew 5:17-37

    Years ago, I served on the pro-life committee of the parish I attended. At one meeting, I noticed that the more we talked about changing the law, the less comfortable one of our members became. When asked why, she said, “I don’t want to focus on changing laws. I want to focus on changing hearts so the very idea of abortion becomes unthinkable.”

    While I believe there’s room for both, I understood what she meant. And I hear echoes of that perspective in the Gospel today.

    The writers of the New Testament don’t portray Jesus as just another wise man offering good advice. St. Paul calls him the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24). And that means he is uniquely able to reveal what the Law was always meant to do.

    So when Jesus says, “You have heard it said… but I say to you…”, he isn’t correcting Moses. He’s reaching beyond the letter of the Law to its heart.

    That’s why he moves from “Do not kill” to the anger that leads to it, and from “Do not commit adultery” to the disordered ways we too often look at or relate to one another. He isn’t dismissing the Law — he’s uncovering its deepest purpose.

    And what is that purpose? Love. Love is the heart of the Law – both love of God and love of neighbor. It’s true that the purpose of having laws is to keep us from wrongdoing, but it’s also true that a heart formed in love makes wrongdoing unthinkable. Jesus is calling us to live not just under the law, but from the heart and by heart.

    When we learn something by heart, we don’t just memorize it. We absorb it so deeply that it becomes part of us. That’s what Christ wants. He’s not asking us to merely memorize commandments, but to learn goodness by heart. He knows that if we do that, then obedience to God’s law will show through the goodness that flows from our hearts.

    So how do we learn goodness by heart? I think the Psalm for today said it best: Give me understanding, that I may observe your law and keep it with all my heart (Psalm 119:34). OK then, what is understanding? Understanding is a gift of the Holy Spirit that shows us how the truths of our faith apply to our daily lives. We can cultivate that gift by taking the time every day – perhaps in the evening, or just before bed – to look back on our day and ask ourselves some questions: What good did I do? What did I fail to do? Did I live as though I remembered, as Sirach said in the first reading, that the eyes of God are upon me? I might fool myself into thinking I’m alone sometimes, but remember Sirach. The all-seeing God is always watching.

    The goal of keeping that in mind isn’t to frighten myself into obedience or putting together a list of the commandments I’ve broken – although such a list is useful. No, the goal is to identify what lies at the heart of my behavior. What are my attitudes about life, the people around me, and myself? Do I take people or things for granted? How do I respond when the going gets tough, or when someone really needs me? As I come to understand myself better, I can resolve to make changes where I need to.

    Of course, this takes time. None of us arrives overnight. But Christ, who is Wisdom itself, patiently writes God’s law on our hearts — through prayer, the Eucharist, forgiveness, and the daily practice of charity.

    Yes, it requires effort on our part. But over time, loving God and loving our neighbor becomes less a burden and more an instinct.

    That isn’t abolishing the Law. That is the Law fulfilled — in a heart made like Christ’s.

    —

  • The Ear of the Heart: Tuesday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

    The Ear of the Heart: Tuesday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

    1 Corinthians 2:10b-16; Luke 4:31-37

    In the early 1950’s a young girl dreaming of a glorious acting career packed her bags, left Chicago, and set out for Hollywood. She changed her name to Dolores Hart. A fine actress who reminded many people of Grace Kelly, she achieved almost instant success. By age 18 she landed the part of Elvis Presley’s love interest in the movie “Loving You,” and over the next few years appeared in 9 more films with such stars as Montgomery Clift, George Hamilton and Robert Wagner. After falling in love with a young architect, Dolores got engaged and set their wedding date for the following February, 1963.

    Then something happened. At the age of 24, after visiting a Benedictine abbey of Regina Laudis for a rest, Dolores left Hollywood to become a nun. Shocked, her fans and friends wrote angry letters, accusing her of throwing her life away. Her response was simple: “If you heard what I hear, you would come, too.”

    We might wonder how she heard anything but the fact is that she had been listening for a long time. Since the age of 10 when she converted from Protestantism, Dolores was a devout, practicing Catholic. Even at the height of her career she attended holy Mass every day. Such devotion our Lord surely repays; undoubtedly over the years the Holy Spirit moved within her, stirring her to a deeper relationship with Christ. What a splendid example of St. Paul’s words in the first reading: We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God.

    Like her fans and friends, we may wonder what was so wrong with the path she was already on, but if so consider how St. Paul continued: And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom, but with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms. Dolores may herself not have been able to put these realities into words; indeed, she was probably unaware of what was happening. By her own account she wasn’t unhappy with either her success or her plans for marriage and family life; the call for change within her came as much as a surprise to her as it did to everyone else. Ultimately however, what mattered was not her plans or awareness but her docility; she remained in conversation with our Lord and in close relationship with him. So it is with all of us; like Dolores, all of us are called to docility in our spiritual life; ideally, to dialog with God and discern his plans for us and our openness to them.

    I say “ideally” because in the gospel we are reminded that the spiritual realities spoken of by St. Paul include another voice, one that is not interested in honest dialog but in interjecting, demanding to know what there is between us and our Lord. This is the voice of the enemy and although we tend to think in terms of extraordinary manifestations such as demonic possession, its ordinary activity is much more pervasive and comes in four ways: deception, accusation, doubt, and enticement. First, deception: The voice that whispers, “Everyone does it! Everyone looks at their phone while driving; everyone watches violent or degrading movies,” etc. Second, accusation: “You’re hopeless; don’t even bother trying to be good; God will never forgive you; you aren’t good enough for religious life.” Third, doubt: “Is that really a sin? Aren’t you just being scrupulous?” Finally, he entices us: “Look, that food you gave up for Lent! Come on, just this one time, just a little bit. Indulge! You deserve it!”

    Yet, just as Jesus expelled the demon in the gospel, so His grace counters the enemy within us. Against deception he gives the truth that his power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9); against the accusation of our worthlessness he assures us of our dignity as sons and daughters of God (2 Corinthians 6:18); against doubt he gives the certainty of God’s infinite mercy and love (John 3:16); and against enticements to weaken and commit evil he gives the strength of the promise that those who endure to the end will be saved (Matthew 24:13).

    In his promise is our hope and we will only hear it if we like Mother Dolores take the advice of St. Benedict and listen with the ear of the heart.