Jun 24 Wed
My heart, should I let it go wild or guide it?
God has the right to ask for our heart, our love and affection, because He created us, He keeps us in being, He has redeemed us from sin at the cost of His Son's blood, and He watches over us constantly. He has called us by our name, and "He loves each one of us more than all the mothers in the world can love their children." Because of all this, He wants us to give Him our body with all its senses; our soul, with all its faculties; He asks for our very intimacy, our heart.
Surrendering the heart is difficult, but it ends the miserable search for compensations.
We must turn our eyes to Jesus Christ, our Love, and tell Him that, despite our weakness, we do want to be His, and only His. “Don't you have a feeling that greater peace and closer union will come to you when you have responded to that extraordinary grace that is asking you for total detachment? - Struggle for His sake, to please Him; but strengthen your hope."
When the longing for compensations grows stronger, when the temptation to human consolation tries to enchain our heart and turn it away from God's love, we need to think about heaven, the endless happiness that God our Lord has in store for us. “Why stoop to drink in the puddles of worldly consolations when you can quench your thirst in waters that spring up into life everlasting?"
“How clear the way is!... How obvious the obstacles! What good weapons to overcome them! -And yet... how much going astray and how much stumbling! That is so, isn't it?"
“-It's that fine thread - a chain: a chain of wrought iron - which you and I know about, and which you aren't willing to break, and it is causing you to stray from the path, and making you stumble and even fall."
“-What are you waiting for to cut it... and go forward?"
“When you put into practice all this doctrine, says St. Josemaría, there will be times when you find that words are just not enough: you'll want to break into song, like the young men who go and sing love-songs to their sweethearts."
We must surrender our hearts to live in universal fraternal charity, without distinctions.
“If you belong to Christ - entirely to Christ! - you will have for everyone - from Christ himself - fire, light, and warmth." The total surrender of our hearts actually helps us in our fraternal charity, because it eliminates the danger of self-seeking and prevents our love for one another from being based simply on human reasons.
If our heart is set on God alone, and on family and friends, and all souls for His sake, we will readily be able to follow St Augustine's advice: “Love, and do what you like. If you keep quiet, keep quiet out of love ...; if you correct, correct out of love; if you forgive, forgive out of love. Make sure this root of charity is there in your soul, for nothing but good can come of it."