Aug
21
How’s Your Heart?
August 21, 2008 |
How’s your heart? Not your blood pressure, pulse rate, or VO2 Max rate; but the spiritual soundness of your heart.
I starting pondering this question after reading the first reading from today’s Mass (Ezekiel 36):
“I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts. I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes, careful to observe my decrees. You shall live in the land I gave your ancestors; you shall be my people and I will be your God.”
Today’s Responsorial Psalm is from Psalm 51 and has King David praying:
“A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me. . . . My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit; a heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn.”
It doesn’t get too much hopeful than these two passages. No matter how cold, hard, self-centered or proud our hearts have grown, God is always there to accept us and give us a “new heart”; a “natural heart”, a ”clean heart.” And as we accept this gift from him, we will be encouraged knowing that we are his people and he is our God; and that he will not spurn us.
We spend a great deal of time caring or worrying about our hearts, both physically and metaphorically (for those who have suffered from a broken heart). We also need to care for our hearts spiritually. And we do so by praying to God for hearts created by him and spirits renewed by him. We do so by asking for mercy, redemption and salvation, and by living in obedience to him.
So, how is your heart?
