By Fr. Roy Cimagala
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)
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
