THERE is no doubt whatsoever that if we want to have our
heart to be in its best and ideal condition, it should be conformed
after Christ’s Sacred Heart. It should not be allowed to throb for
anything else, something that we should train our heart to avoid.
Instead, we have to do everything for it to be raised to God all the
time, whether we are in our good or bad times, in our successes or
failures, in our joys and sorrows, etc.
Our heart, which is the very core of our being, the most
intimate part of our life, the place where things start and end, where
we meet God and hear his voice,…this heart of ours comes from God, is
actually shaped after the most sacred heart of Jesus who is the
pattern of our humanity, and belongs to God. We should be clear about
this fundamental truth of our faith.
Remember what the Book of Proverbs says about this point:
“My son, give me your heart,” (23,26) as if God is begging us to give
our heart to him since we always have the tendency to expropriate it
to be solely our own, using or misusing it for our own self-indulgent
purposes.
That could be the reason why Christ, when asked what the
greatest commandment was, said that it is to love God “with all your
heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Mt 22,37) God
is not asking too much from us with that commandment. He is not asking
something unreasonable. In fact, he is offering what would be the best
deal for us.
We need to broaden and deepen our understanding of the
true nature and character of our life here on earth, and of the role
of our heart in it, always guided by our Christian faith and not just
by any purely human estimation, no matter how brilliant it is, if only
to realize that we need to conform our heart to Christ’s Sacred Heart.
We need to constantly ask ourselves as we go through the
many affairs of our day, “Where is my heart? Is it with God? Is it
throbbing in synch with Christ’s Sacred Heart? Do we really know what
is in that Sacred Heart of Christ?, etc.”
That way we would get some ideas of what to do to conform
our heart to Christ’s Sacred Heart. Yes, there will be some
difficulties, awkwardness, even mistakes, but if we persist, for sure
the way to see and imitate what is inside Christ’s Sacred Heart would
open to us.
The secret is in our persistence and perseverance. Let’s
not forget that God is a loving father to us. He cannot allow us to
wallow in our difficulties without him helping us. And we also have to
understand that the difficulties we will experience in this regard
would always be helpful to us if considered in faith. There is always
a reason behind them.
We should just try our best to attain that level where the
very stream of our consciousness has God always in the middle of
everything. Let’s always make our faith functional, so that this
reality would be captured in our heart and mind. To be sure, we are
not inventing things here. We are not playing make-believe. God is
first of all already in our heart. All we have to do is to learn to
acknowledge him.
If we become more and more familiar with the Sacred Heart
of Jesus, we would know why we always have to be patient,
understanding, compassionate, magnanimous, etc. The very image of
Christ, the pattern of our humanity and the savior of our damaged
humanity, would be formed in us.
We can echo the same words of St. Paul: “It is no longer I
who live, but Christ lives in me!” (Gal 2,20)
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