St Bartholomew, Brighton Trinity 20 (31C) Matters of the Heart 30.10.10

I want to speak about what I will call matters of the heart. This is prompted by today's Gospel reading from Luke 19. Like Zacchaeus we have to descend to meet with Jesus – not 18 feet from a tree but 18 inches – the distance between our brains and our hearts.

To speak of the heart is to speak of the centre of our personal being. Scripture regards the heart as the sphere of divine influence which contains the real, hidden man. It represents and conceals the true character of a man or woman. At the same time the heart, source of the hidden springs of our personal life, can through sin defile the whole circuit of our action.

Proverbs 3 tells us that a man whose heart is trustful upon God has "healing in his flesh" and "refreshment in his bones" and that is saying an awful lot about the influence of what Our Lord calls "honest and good hearts" upon the bodies and minds of those possessing such a blessing.

If our hearts are right the health there spills into body and mind, emotions, thoughts and intentions.

Christianity concerns the heart. It continually challenges us to go deep, to seek the freedom of the kingdom of God which is within us through our baptism and to find and value the centre of our personal being, the heart.

Some time ago I watched a sort of Brains Trust on TV when the select group of intellectuals were asked if there were any causes left that people might be prepared to die for. Only the religious man said that could be so. It seemed that the sorts of beliefs that the others assented to were not really worth the candle. Only the man who had been seized in his heart by the awesome Reality of God had to admit that to believe as he did could one day call him to sacrifice himself for his principles and not vice versa. As a diversion I would applaud the fact that we now have a prime minister with a seemingly definite religion and a heart assent to the good values associated with Hinduism

There is little heart assent, real assent to truth around. As Christians we have made an assent to Our Lord in baptism, confirmation and, for myself, ordination, but that assent can grow superficial. We live so much at the level of our external bodily appetites or our emotions or our intellects and these can drown the heart’s yearning.

What is divine and also simple is to live at the deepest level, the level of the heart.

God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is a personal God and he seeks to build a personal relationship with us. This is set up in principle through Baptism and nourished through the Eucharist and through preaching and prayer and so on. We need to appropriate the Lord’s personal invitation set forth in these ways. 

This means welcoming God to our personal centre and for that to happen we need to be at home there - in our hearts. Often we are so busy living at the level of bodily appetite or mental stimulus that, however much we profess Christianity, we have no heart to heart with God. We live on the surface. As Zacchaeus descended that tree to do business with Our Lord we also should be drawn to descend with Jesus, descend down into our hearts. 

Are there any good strategies to achieve this? I have found one many others have found useful. This is continual repetition of the age old Jesus Prayer which runs: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ This Prayer centres me. It reminds me of God’s love present alongside me and within me in Jesus Christ. Slowly repeating those words, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ lowers my being eighteen inches from mind to heart. It dispels selfish external preoccupations and provides an outward focus upon those around me wherever I am, including God. The Lord uses the discipline of continuous recitation to turn me out of myself in loving intercession towards my neighbours. It requires the will to pray, of course, which comes from the Holy Spirit who is always at hand to cleanse the thoughts of our heart if we ask him.

The heart, as the centre of our life, commands our conscious being - but is often at the mercy of our unconscious being. Sometimes we find it hard to face ourselves, let alone possess ourselves as we are, however much we believe God loves us. Our failure to give out to others can link to this failure to know, love and possess ourselves - you can’t give what you don’t possess!

The knocks we take in life are very often passed over consciously and stored in the unconscious. Sometimes situations cause us to react out of all proportion. Very often the stored hurts, resentments and so on constrict our hearts, our personal life. I don't want to dwell on this more than to say again we must possess ourselves before we can give ourselves. Scrutiny of our hearts, time taken in self examination and inner healing will reward us with a sort of "deconstricting" of the heart. Talking to a priest or finding a spiritual director or counsellor can help here.

‘Zacchaeus, come down, hurry because I must stay at your house today’. Our Lord has the same invitation to us this morning and we will say in response ‘Lord, I am not worthy, that thou shouldest come under my roof’. May our welcome of him in the Blessed Sacrament reach beyond our lips into our centre, our home, which is our heart. Continual echoing of the ‘Lord, I am not worthy’ welcome words might serve you in this as you follow up receiving Communion by repeating the Jesus Prayer to yourself hour by hour: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’.

Christianity concerns the heart. It challenges us to go deep, to seek the inner freedom of the kingdom of God which is within us and needs to be owned. Jesus meek and lowly of heart make our hearts like unto your Heart! Come, Holy Spirit!