247. Ninth Thursday of Ordinary Time

Meditations no. 239 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

God wants us to give him our heart.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. Christ was asked one day: Which commandment is the first of all? He answered with these words from the Old Testament. His reply can be folly understood in the light of God’s appeal: My son, give me your heart.

God has the right to ask us for our heart, our love and affection, because he created us, he keeps us in being, he has redeemed us from sin at the cost of his Son’s blood, and he watches over us constantly. He has called us by our name, and he loves each one of us more than all the mothers in the world can love their children. Because of all this, he wants us to give him our body with all its senses; our soul, with all its faculties; he asks us for our very intimacy, our heart.

Iesus Christus heri, et hodie: ipse et in saecula. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever. Jesus Christ is alive, with flesh like mine, but glorified; with a heart of flesh like mine. Scio enim quod Redemptor meus vivit, I know that my Redeemer lives. My Redeemer, my Friend, my Father, my King, my God, my Love, lives! He is watching over me. He loves me even more than the blessed woman who brought me into the world, my mother, does… How often this simple, trite consideration has sparked off a roaring blaze of Faith and Love in a manly heart!

My heart is ready, O God, my heart is ready, we say with the Church; I will sing and make melody. We cannot turn a deaf ear to our Lord’s loving petition. And at his insistence - My son, give me your heart - there comes forth from the depth of our soul a sincere desire to tell God, because we love him: Jesus, keep our heart safe! Keep it for yourself! A tough, strong, tender, affectionate, sensitive heart, which is full of charity towards my brothers and sisters and all souls, for your sake. And so we will be rewarded with our Lord’s words to the scribe who accepted the first commandment in full: You are not far from the kingdom of God.

Surrendering the heart is difficult but it puts an end to miserable compensation-seeking.

Detachment. You should have your hearts in heaven. Only like that can you then put them into earthly things in the right way. This detachment is difficult because our heart often looks for consolation, and has the all too human desire to feel loved, understood, and forgiven by other people; it goes after earthly compensations. Your poor heart… that’s what scandalizes you! Press it, squeeze it tight in your hands, don’t give it consolations. And, filled with a noble compassion, when it asks for them, say to it slowly, as one speaking in confidence: “Heart: heart on the Cross! Heart on the Cross!”

We need to turn our eyes to Jesus Christ, our Love, and tell him that in spite of our weakness we do want to be his, and only his. Don’t you have a feeling that greater peace and closer union will come to you when you have responded to that extraordinary grace which is asking you for total detachment? - Struggle for His sake, to please Him; but strengthen your hope.

When the longing for compensations grows stronger, when the temptation to human consolation tries to enchain our heart and turn it aside from God’s love, we need to think about heaven, the endless happiness that God our Lord has in store for us. Why stoop to drink in the puddles of worldly consolations when you can quench your thirst in waters that spring up into life everlasting?

If we have given our heart to Christ, whole, young, and vibrant, and are seeking him and his glory alone, there will no longer be any danger of attachment to created things, because we will love people and things for the love of God, with Christ’s own Heart.

How clear the way is!… How obvious the obstacles! What good weapons to overcome them! -And yet… how much going astray and how much stumbling! That’s so, isn’t it?

-It’s that fine thread - a chain: a chain of wrought iron - which you and I know about, and which you aren’t willing to break, and it is causing you to stray from the path, and making you stumble and even fall

-What are you waiting for to cut it… and go forward?

When you put into practice all this doctrine, says our Father, there’ll be times when you find that words are just not enough: you’ll want to break into song, like the young men who go and sing love-songs to their sweethearts. But you and I will sing human love-songs to God’s love, and you will feel like the living creatures Ezekiel described to represent our Lord’s Evangelists: ibant et revertebantur in similitudinem fulguris coruscantis (they darted to and fro, like a flash of lightning); you will go through the world giving off light, like burning torches throwing out fiery sparks.

Surrendering our heart so as to live in universal fraternal charity, without distinctions.

You’re afraid of becoming cold and distant towards everyone. You want so very much to be detached!

-Forget that worry: if you belong to Christ - entirely to Christ! - you will have for everyone - from Christ himself - fire, light and warmth. The total surrender of our heart actually helps us in our fraternal charity, because it eliminates the danger of self-seeking and prevents our love for one another from being based simply on human reasons. If our heart is set on God alone, and on our brothers and sisters and all souls for his sake, we will readily be able to follow St Augustine’s advice: Love, and do what you like. If you keep quiet, keep quiet out of love … ; if you correct, correct out of love; if you forgive, forgive out of love. Make sure this root of charity is there in your soul, for nothing but good can come of it.

The love of God will lead us to love everyone equally, in spite of whatever differences there may be in character, tastes and temperaments. It’s not wrong to feel an initial liking or dislike for certain people, our Father said; what is wrong is to show that liking or dislike, to the detriment of true charity. In the Work we love everyone, unshakeably, firmly, and constantly, with a love that is born, not of human affinity, but of the supernatural fraternity we share. Which is why our Father tells us: among your own people, carefully avoid even the appearance of a particular friendship. That would be a clear sign that we were still living on too much of a human plane; it would leave the door open to many evils, harming the unity of the apostolate, endangering souls, damaging the Work, and making our service to the Church ineffective. Hence, our Father puts us on our guard against being inclined to like people because of similarity of character, being related to them, coming from the same place, having been friends before your vocation, studying the same subject, and so on, which is normally the way these possible errors start.

As the fruit of this time of prayer, let us renew our resolution to detach our heart from any disordered affection so as to have it set only on God our Lord. His Love … is well worth any love! Let us ask Jesus to make the Sacrament of his Body and Blood into a spiritual medicine to cleanse our heart; to make us love all our brothers and sisters, and all souls, with generous, self-sacrificing love, as he loves us. Ask our blessed Mother in heaven to purify your heart, and she will obtain this grace for you from your Father God.