Category: tender heart

Break Our Hearts of Stone

Break Our Hearts of Stone

It seems keeping the heart one of flesh, instead of being one of stone, is the continual work of a lifetime. Softening, rather than hardening, requires a strength and intentionality that doesn’t come naturally to me. In the wake of my defensiveness and desire for self-preservation, I repeatedly need to engage in the work of letting my heart be real. The simple act of believing in the goodness of others (and living in that truth) is one that requires me to be soft-hearted over and over again.

As I’ve gone into the prison, I have grown in seeing the goodness in people who have made many mistakes. Many of the men I interact with are easy to find goodness in because they are seeking the Lord, too. Their zeal for the Lord or their desire to love Him or find Him invites me to see how God is moving in their hearts. Others are a little more difficult since they make me feel uncomfortable or continually lie to me. But as a whole, I am able to look at men who have raped, murdered, and committed all sorts of crimes and proclaim their inherent goodness.

For whatever reason, we often look up what crimes the men are in for and how long of a sentence they received. At times, it helps to understand their position: are they in for life or a few years or simply back after breaking parole? We decided to look up one man I’ve talked with several times and see his crime. It was surprising because the kindness and gentleness I’ve experienced from him ran contrary to the crime he was sentenced to serve. Yet, despite the surprise, it didn’t really change how I felt toward him. The goodness and kindness I’ve experienced are real and he is far more than the crimes of his past.

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His Human Heart

Jesus loves us with a human heart.

Human hearts are unruly things.  They don’t fit neatly into boxes.  They don’t follow the head as often as we may wish.  They can experience the entire gamut of emotions…in an hour.  They get conflicted, torn, bruised, inflamed, and expanded.

Human hearts can be fickle, quickly following the ebb and flow of the emotions one is surrounded by.  Yet they can be enduring in their sentiments, sometimes for far longer than we would wish them to be.

The hearts nestled within us are the great gifts that may appear to cause us the greatest of trials.  They feel heavy when we suffer or suffer with/for someone else.  At times, we may get frustrated with our responses, the spasm in our heart when nobody else seems to be impacted.

Jesus has one of these.  A human heart pumped Precious Blood through His veins and with that heart He loved.  He experienced anger when the temple was misused.  Jesus felt sorrow when He wept at the tomb of Lazarus.  He was compassionate and merciful to the sinful and the ill as they approached Him.

“He has loved us all with a human heart.  For this reason, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by our sins and for our salvation, ‘is quite rightly considered the chief sign and symbol for that…love with which the divine Redeemer continually loves the eternal Father and all human beings’ without exception.”   (CCC 478)

The Incarnation is the central point of Christianity.  We believe in a God who desired so much to encounter us, that He became one of us.  He didn’t send a mere messenger, He sent His Beloved Son, He came Himself.

We romanticize the earthly life of Jesus.  Of course life would be easy if we were God, we think.  And then we say that God couldn’t actually understand our pain or suffering, because He never experienced something like this.

He experienced it all.

No, maybe your particular situation is not one that Jesus found Himself in.  Yet on the cross He experienced the suffering of all humanity, in all its forms and intensity.  The “But You’re God” excuse only lasts for so long.  Yes, you have grasped His divinity.  Congratulations.  Now grasp His humanity.  It wasn’t a mask or a mere appearance, it is a reality.

His human heart beats.
I love you.

It aches for humanity.
Yes, I suffer also.

It remains present to us so that we might embrace Him in a deeper way.
“The Body of Christ.”

Your weary little heart needs to know that Christ has a heart like yours.

His heart is tender, vulnerable, open to love all.

This heart desires to dwell within you.

"After this He asked me for my heart, which I begged Him to take. He did so and placed it in His own Adorable Heart where He showed it to me as a little atom which was being consumed in this great furnace, and withdrawing it thence as a burning flame in the form of a heart, He restored it to the place whence He had taken it..."  -St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

Sacred Heart of Jesus, sanctify my heart.

The Lord provides for the tender hearted

The Lord has given me the gift of a tender heart.  I don’t always view it as a gift, I don’t always want people to know about it, but on occassions I am reminded to be thankful for it.  Now this sensitivity doesn’t mean I cry when I see a dead deer and worry about Bambi.  It also doesn’t mean that I sob over soap operas and run to see every chick flick in theaters. 

What it does mean is that I nearly cried the other night when I saw a gorgeous sunset.  It means I cannot read “A Child Called It” because I feel physically sick and begin to feel depressed.  My sister brought the book home from the library several years ago and I tried to read part of it.  The story focuses on the abuse a young boy endures at the hands of his mother.  I feel sick just thinking about the way I felt when I read the first pages.  This sensitive heart causes me to remember things people said or did years ago that they probably didn’t intend to be lasered into my memory.  It meant that I had to will myself to not cry when my principal was talking to me about how I handled a situation last year.  He wasn’t even angry or yelling at me but I had to keep willing myself to not let the tears fall.  “Trish.  You cannot cry.  You are an adult.”  So I managed to not cry…until he left the room.  Then I sobbed.  This tender heart causes me to cry each time I open it up a little in spiritual direction.  I plan to high-5 Father the first time I manage to walk out of there without having shed tears.  This tender heart causes me to long for Heaven as though I have been homesick my entire life.

Recently a man who had worked with my dad died due to brain cancer.  He kept a blog about the journey he was making with the cancer.  Instead of becoming bitter and cynical or blaming God, he called his cancer “the gift.”  I didn’t really know him, but I loved seeing him at the different Masses around town.  As I read through some of his blog entries, I cried.  He writes about how he sees God each day and encouraged people to look for God wherever they were.  I think of the family he leaves behind and I mourn for them.  Yet I also think (though I don’t intend to minimize their pain) about what a gift all of it actually could be for them.  To know that you will be dying and soon.  It would make me live each day to the full.

But shouldn’t I already be doing that?  Why is it that the fear of death suddenly makes us desire to live?  St. Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is man fully alive.”  I want to be fully alive.  Sometimes it takes a sunset to wake me from my stupor.  Or the feeling of holding a beautiful niece in my arms as she squirms and smiles.  Every now and then I am just struck by reality–the grass is really green or the sky seems so clear.  Suddenly I can see and I realize how blind I let myself become 

Lord, help me to embrace this tender heart.  This heart that causes tears to well up in my eyes at inconvenient times and yet allows me to see a beauty that is perhaps overlooked.  Above all, help me to place my tender heart within the wound of Your Sacred Heart.  Only there is it truly safe, only there can she find rest.  Thank You, Lord, for this gift called life—the challenges, the heartaches, the joys, the blessings, the experiences of You that reaffirm that all of this has a purpose.  Thank You, Lord.  Amen.