POPE Benedict’s trip to the United Kingdom in September has led me to realize we need to rediscover our heart. First of all, he adopted the new English Blessed Henry Cardinal Newman’s motto, “Cor ad cor loquitur” (Heart speaks to heart) as the theme of his visit.
That’s already a very meaningful statement, whose significance is often taken for granted in our world today. The heart is not just a bodily organ, nor is it only a symbol of romantic love. It is the very core of our being, the seat that contains the elements that distinguish us from the other creatures.
The heart, as the Gospel says, is where our treasure is, where our true and ultimate identity is found, where our personhood is kept and nourished, where our dignity as children of God is established. Where the heart is, that’s also where we actually are.
In the last analysis, the heart is where our genuine connection with God and with everybody else is made. Short of this, our relationships actually rest on weak foundations. We would be thwarting the true yearnings of our heart, making it a heart of stone, instead of a heart of flesh meant by God, its creator.
We need to take care of our heart, understanding it beyond the mere medical sense. We need to see to it that our heart is properly used and maintained, its object and food clearly identified and engaged, all of which are more spiritual than material in character.
Its proper language is love, not greed nor pride nor self-centeredness. Its proper dynamism is to give oneself to others—first to God and then to neighbor, whoever he may be, including our enemy.
Our heart can only thrive on love that is, first of all, a participation of the original love, which is the love of God. Everything that is contained in that love constitutes the whole truth of love proper to our heart. It should not just be any human version of love, no matter how brilliant it may appear.
It’s the love Jesus meant when he said, “Love one another as I have loved you.” And what a love it was, and is—all the way to the end, till death!
Our problem is that we have not been taking care of our heart. Instead of feeding it with love, the real one and not just its caricatures, we allow it to swim in toxic waters—beholden to practicality, popularity, power, if not to lust, greed, pride, sentimentalism, etc.
We actually have been alienating ourselves from the true nature of our heart. That, to a large extent, is why we are drifting toward forms of worldliness, materialism, if not, agnosticism and atheism, where God has no place in our life.
At the very least, we easily succumb to pretension and hypocrisy when the heart does not function well.
In that UK trip of his, the Pope used the heart to speak to a people who are largely known to be lukewarm toward religion and anything spiritual, and managed to win them over to his side, to the side of faith and reason in their proper blend.
Weeks before that, there were already threats that his trip would fail, that he would be met with fierce protests, etc., etc. There were those who expressed the view that the Pope represented all the evil of religion in society. If they had their way, they would want religion, faith, Church annihilated.
The Pope arrived, and the reception was nothing short of tremendous. All the threats and the obvious efforts to put the Pope in bad light fizzled out. Even when the Pope told them some inconvenient truths, the people listened and appreciated his gesture.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron captured the significance of the event when he told the Pope:
“As you, your Holiness, have said, faith is not a problem for legislators to solve but rather a vital part of our national conversation…You have really challenged the whole country to sit up and think, and that can only be a good thing.”
The Pope’s deft use of the heart, his and that of the whole Church which he heads, somehow broadened the understanding of religious freedom that is subtly undermined in a country that is slipping into secularism, a Godless worldview.
When the heart is properly used, truth blends well with charity, orthodoxy with openness and tolerance, fidelity with compassion and patience.
It’s time to recover the true nature and purpose of our human heart.
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