The heart goes beyond feelings and intuitions, though. The Dominican Fr. Thomas Joseph White said that the “heart and intelligence go together. The mind is reason’s instrument, but the heart its seat.” We know that to love is to will the good of another. We don't simply send "positive thoughts and prayers," but exercise love concretely in acts.
'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" our Lord exhorts us in Mt 22:37. Love him with all your heart. Love him with all your soul. Love him with all your mind.
Being human is an exercise in synthesis. We are not all heart, or all mind, or all soul, but all things through the one who created us. We have a skeleton to hold up the body and give us form (right doctrine); we have blood to carry oxygen to our organs (prayer); we have muscles (the will); we have organs themselves that all serve a function for the body (gifts of the Holy Spirit); we have a brain, but beyond the physical organ, the metaphysical--the mind; we have a soul. To be human is one of the most remarkable things, the crowning achievement of God's creation.
One should have a lifetime of contemplations in the Incarnation of Christ, and never run dry. For the God of the Universe to take on flesh, to be given a human heart, a mind, and to debase himself to function as we do: eating food, using the latrine, needing sleep. To have infinite love for man constrained by skin. When his heart was pierced by a lance, it could not help but gush forth the life within it.
"I will give them a new heart," says the Lord God. (Ez 36:26). On this Feast of the Sacred Heart, we must learn how to love as our Savior loved. He died for all men and all women. He lived as a man, but embodied the tenderness of a mother (Mt 23:37) and the strong protection of a father (Jn 2:13-16). He was both strong and tender, unafraid to weep when moved by emotion (Jn 11:35) but stoic in the face of temptation (Mt 4:1-11).
It is not effeminate to feel, to be bruised, to make oneself vulnerable, anymore than it is not too masculine to use logic and reason to temper emotionalism. It is a healthy, whole human being who can embody heart, mind, and soul and direct it to love of God and neighbor.
The Sacred Heart teaches us to temper a cold, removed intellectualism--of doing "all the right things" like the older brother--with the love of a father rejoicing over his lost son who has been found. It sheds its cloak and runs undignified out to meet him in order to forget all things. It embraces and slaughters with abandon, it cloaks and hides faults in itself. This heart burns with love, in order that all men be drawn to himself (Jn 12:32). It sears everything it touches.
When we learn to love as Jesus loved, when we conform our heart and model it on the Sacred Heart, we find soon that such love cannot be contained. It must go out from itself, be pierced, and drench the ones who foist the lance with the blood and water of redemptive love. It must love. It can do no other.
'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" our Lord exhorts us in Mt 22:37. Love him with all your heart. Love him with all your soul. Love him with all your mind.
Being human is an exercise in synthesis. We are not all heart, or all mind, or all soul, but all things through the one who created us. We have a skeleton to hold up the body and give us form (right doctrine); we have blood to carry oxygen to our organs (prayer); we have muscles (the will); we have organs themselves that all serve a function for the body (gifts of the Holy Spirit); we have a brain, but beyond the physical organ, the metaphysical--the mind; we have a soul. To be human is one of the most remarkable things, the crowning achievement of God's creation.
One should have a lifetime of contemplations in the Incarnation of Christ, and never run dry. For the God of the Universe to take on flesh, to be given a human heart, a mind, and to debase himself to function as we do: eating food, using the latrine, needing sleep. To have infinite love for man constrained by skin. When his heart was pierced by a lance, it could not help but gush forth the life within it.
"I will give them a new heart," says the Lord God. (Ez 36:26). On this Feast of the Sacred Heart, we must learn how to love as our Savior loved. He died for all men and all women. He lived as a man, but embodied the tenderness of a mother (Mt 23:37) and the strong protection of a father (Jn 2:13-16). He was both strong and tender, unafraid to weep when moved by emotion (Jn 11:35) but stoic in the face of temptation (Mt 4:1-11).
It is not effeminate to feel, to be bruised, to make oneself vulnerable, anymore than it is not too masculine to use logic and reason to temper emotionalism. It is a healthy, whole human being who can embody heart, mind, and soul and direct it to love of God and neighbor.
The Sacred Heart teaches us to temper a cold, removed intellectualism--of doing "all the right things" like the older brother--with the love of a father rejoicing over his lost son who has been found. It sheds its cloak and runs undignified out to meet him in order to forget all things. It embraces and slaughters with abandon, it cloaks and hides faults in itself. This heart burns with love, in order that all men be drawn to himself (Jn 12:32). It sears everything it touches.
When we learn to love as Jesus loved, when we conform our heart and model it on the Sacred Heart, we find soon that such love cannot be contained. It must go out from itself, be pierced, and drench the ones who foist the lance with the blood and water of redemptive love. It must love. It can do no other.
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