We have seen thousands of images of the Sacred Heart, with Jesus revealing his heart through his garments or even holding his heart in his hand – very bizarre & disturbing to non-Catholics, I assure you – so much so that most of us have probably stopped thinking about it. It seems to have descended largely into the realm of religious kitsch. With that in mind, I offer the following:
I visualize the beating heart inside of the rib cage of the human body of Jesus. Does the heart of Jesus still pump blood? Yes, I think so. Does he still bleed from his wounds? I think so, but it is not a bleeding that weakens & diminishes his life, but as it pours out into the chalices at Holy Mass around the world & throughout time, it increases his life – if such a thing can be said without blaspheming - by his communicating of his life with the lives of the faithful. His heart is the well-spring for the lives of those who belong to his Body through baptism. Then his life increases as more sons & daughters are born into the Church to love & worship the heavenly Father. How much power, then, must flow through those veins, & now in ours - the very lifeblood of God!
Then I think of my own heart, & how weak & limited it is, & how poor it’s capacity to love. A stony thing: cold, hard, dank, & foul. Yet, this is not the first cave that the Lord has entered. In fact, his mother bore him in such a place. She was there when they laid his lifeless corpse in such a place. Likewise she keeps vigil at our hearts, pleading to allow us to let her Son in. And how often we refuse, & turn them away. But if we will answer Mary's plea, if we will let him, there is no tomb of a heart that he cannot transform back into a garden full of life again, a place where God is want to walk with his friends in the cool of the evening, discussing the matters of the day.As a child I was often accused of having a very active imagination. I think visualizing aspects of the faith is a good thing. So it is quite natural for me to imagine what the chapel of my soul looks like. Surprisingly - on this feast of St. Thomas More – since the very moment I laid eyes on it after climbing the narrow, steep spiral stair, I have imagined it looks very much like the chapel in the Tower of London, perhaps where the saint himself at some time assisted at Holy Mass.
1 comment:
The chapel of your soul is a much warmer place than this although, indeed, I am sure it has the symmetry of the arches and windows rising to heaven. And I can almost hear your voice lifted in chant!
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