[Ep 125: Answering atheism Tuesday]
Here’s a quick recap of the main points from our reflection on the human heart:
From Dietrich von Hildebrand, the “heart” is our true self – it reveals what we value – and so the heart is most closely associated with love. Yes, love is an act of will, but the true depth and meaning of love is expressed through our heart. We’ve all experienced when someone does something nice for us out of a sense of duty, but their “heart isn’t in it” – as opposed to someone who makes us feel truly valued.
Jesus’ Sacred Heart reveals all that the human heart is capable of. The Gospels reveal Jesus’ heart – what he valued, what brought Him joy, what stirred His anger, what moved Him with mercy – and by meditating on scripture we not only come to know Jesus’ heart but He reveals our heart to us.
Mary’s Immaculate Heart shows us the path to being transformed by Christ. An immaculate heart is also a soft heart (because it is not hardened by sin and cynicism). The purer and softer our heart, the more fully Christ can imprint Himself on it.
Our goal should be to have our hearts transformed into Mary’s immaculate heart so that we can enter Jesus’ Sacred Heart can be imprinted in us. In fact – that is the mystical advice of Mother Teresa.
As so often the case, the world has a sense of all of this – it perceives that we all have a heart problem of some sort and that left to our own devices, our interior is disordered – but it goes off track with both the diagnosis and the cure (just look at the offerings from new-agey gurus like Tim Robbins, Eckhart Tolle, Gabor Matte, A.H. Almaas, etc).
The world is schizophrenic on the diagnosis. On one hand it will say you are perfect the way you are, you were born that way, you should shout your weirdness, and so on. It’s a bizarre, woke, androgynous reimagining of the American archetype of rugged individualism. In this case the prescription from the world is that you learn to accept yourself through some combination of mindfulness and positive self-talk (just google “accept who you are” or anything like that).
On the other hand, the world will tell you that you can transform yourself into just about anything. Now the prescription is based on self-awareness, self-empowerment and having a future vision of self.
Notice a lot of self, and more self, with an extra dose of self, for good measure. For variety the gurus might sprinkle in mentions of energy, or the universe, perhaps Buddha, anything BUT the one Triune God.
And you will never hear words like repentance or conversion.
In short, the world would have us take a top-down approach – we just control our brain and everything will be fine.
Christianity tells us differently. It’s not a top-down approach, but inside out. We are transformed from disordered to ordered, from broken to whole, from false to true self, through relationship with Christ.
How does this play out? In a million different ways.
Here’s one very specific approach – to watch where our mind goes during meditation. Distraction in meditation is often a source of frustration, but it can become fruitful when we turn it over to God. This is where authentic self-awareness is beneficial. What is it that is vying for our attention during prayer? Especially – what are the patterns? Are there specific thoughts, memories or imaginings the play out again and again? If so (and there almost always are) – pick one to bring to God for illumination and purification. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you to scripture related to the thought pattern and meditate with that scripture, again praying for illumination and purification. Being aware and bringing the issue to God is how we do our small part (like the widow’s two meager coins) – God will take this and multiply it – light will be shed, doors will be opened, grace will be released.
We go into this in much more detail in 30 Days to Christian Meditation, but in the postscript we list four additional practices that can be very powerful in participating with God to heal specific issues in our interior.
Christ promises to give us a new heart – a “natural heart” – in fact it is the deepest desire of His Sacred Heart. He tells us – “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart” – He wouldn’t give us that command without the hope that He will also give us a heart capable of fulfilling it, if we only ask Him.
Steve and Karen Smith – Interior Life
– Get the book.
Postscript: ways to participate with God’s heart-transforming grace
Reconciliation: forgiveness is powerful medicine. Bishop Fulton Sheen repeatedly noted that as Catholics stopped going to the confessional, they began making their way to the psychotherapist’s couch.
Mary: bringing our issues to Mary in the Rosary has healed countless souls. Especially if there are specific impure or hurtful memories or imagining that plague us, they will melt away in Mary’s motherly care.
Fasting: here again we do our small part – uniting our small sacrifice to our request for healing or purification.
Renunciation: often there is a diabolical attachment to patterns of thought that weigh us down. Here is a prayer of renunciation that we often recommend from Fr. Ripperger (psychologist and exorcist):
(insert the name of the obstacle you face, e.g. “Spirit of anger”)
Spirit of N., I bind you in the Name of Jesus, by the power of the most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ and by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Michael the Archangel, the blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul, and all of the Saints, and I command you to leave me and go to the foot of the Holy Cross to receive your sentence, in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.