He Sees Into Our Hearts

Whenever we engage with the Word, our reading is not just reading, it is an encounter - with the Person of Jesus, Word made flesh, and Splendor of the Father. Such is the truth of our own lectio divina - as we read, we discover, more often than not, that we ourselves are being read. The life we live is not our own. We are Christ’s body, part of him, in him.

And our stories are one with his. In Christ Jesus God “has become not only one of us but even our very selves.”¹ Jesus himself is our story, our book, our destiny - now, today; Jesus is the Book - with the power to reflect and illuminate our life; the one Book that forever informs how we navigate the little strip of time we have been given, helping us clarify and grasp its most vital moments and their meaning.² The wounded and risen Jesus is the key, the template that makes sense of each of our lives. He who sees deep into our hearts – reads them like a book.

A few years ago, my favorite cousin Teddy died quite unexpectedly, and I was asked to lead the prayer at his wake. Though baptized Catholic, Teddy never went to church; his family was never very religious like mine. And even when we were kids, he always thought of church as my “thing.” Certainly, there wouldn’t be a funeral Mass. But there would be a big crowd in the funeral parlor. What would I say? Teddy was very popular, an auto mechanic who always helped anyone he could, generous to a fault. The archetypal gruff giant with a tender heart. 

Then I thought, God gets all of this much better than I do. And it struck me – maybe, just maybe Teddy was now with God, and we were all being invited to see things from his perspective. Somehow the vision of the Book of Revelation became real, and I sensed that we were being invited to see the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, as the book of life was opened; invited to see Teddy being judged according to what he had done as recorded in that book.³ And you know what, Teddy had done very well, the best he could have done with what he was given. And now he got it – church, that God stuff, was not just my thing after all. He finally understood that all the while, year upon year, as he was raising his kids, fixing cars, helping folks with their flats, planting his garden, and loving his wife…God was always, always Mercy, always looking upon him with love, tremendously kind - at least as good as he had been with his kids, not a distant judge or some disinterested holy being, but Someone within him, near him, nearer in fact than he ever realized; the One who could look into his heart and really understand him. Now Teddy finally understood it, he saw face to face. His today had happened.

Now, today. What keeps me, keeps us, from living the urgency of this now of Jesus’ presence and action in our lives? I wonder if very often I don’t hear the words he speaks to me in lectio, in prayer, treasure them for a while and then take these very real words and trivialize them, like little holy mementos, place them on a shelf and look over my shoulder at them. Do I really hear? Do I allow his words to transform me – really grab me from the inside? Or, sad to admit, is part of me still holding out for a better deal, something, someone else to fill my emptiness?

Gratefully the Lord Jesus is relentless. For the “God who spoke of old uninterruptedly converses with”⁴ us, even today, right now. Today his Word is being fulfilled in our hearing if we will allow it. Today.⁵ Now, Jesus wants to free those who are oppressed, now he wants to remove our blindness, now he comes with great good news for us, now he comes to heal us for our hearts are filled with tendencies that can lead us to sin. Now he wants to make of you and me – make of us together - his compassion and his mercy-makers. But so often I find myself, despondent, walking to a nearby village with my head down, much too slow to understand. 

Living in the todayness of Jesus’ compassionate presence always involves surrender and a passover with him into a place of precariousness and uncertainty where we are invited to abandon ourselves and depend on God alone, even unto death, just as he did on the cross. This happens most often when we crash headlong into our own limitations, when I, foolish camel that I am, fail to see my own giant hump, when we do not know how to go on, when finally, in desperation, exasperation, and near despair, we hand ourselves over into God’s hands so that he can act for our good. Then our today comes.⁶

 For most of us some great, earth-shattering revelation never comes. What we get instead are “daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.”⁷ And this is enough, more than enough for a day, today, the now of Jesus’ inbreaking and self-revelation.

Photograph by Father Emmanuel. Reflection by one of the monks.

1. Thomas Merton. 2, Katharine Smyth, All the Lives We Ever Lived, 3. Rev. 20.12, 4. Dei Verbum, 5. See Gerhard Lohfink, Jesus of Nazareth. What He Wanted, Who He Was, 6. Ibid., 7. Virginia Woolf.