Human hearts are unruly things. They don't fit neatly into boxes. They don't follow the head as often as we may wish. They can experience the entire gamut of emotions...in an hour. They get conflicted, torn, bruised, inflamed, and expanded.
Human hearts can be fickle, quickly following the ebb and flow of the emotions one is surrounded by. Yet they can be enduring in their sentiments, sometimes for far longer than we would wish them to be.
The hearts nestled within us are the great gifts that may appear to cause us the greatest of trials. They feel heavy when we suffer or suffer with/for someone else. At times, we may get frustrated with our responses, the spasm in our heart when nobody else seems to be impacted.
Jesus has one of these. A human heart pumped Precious Blood through His veins and with that heart He loved. He experienced anger when the temple was misused. Jesus felt sorrow when He wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He was compassionate and merciful to the sinful and the ill as they approached Him.
"He has loved us all with a human heart. For this reason, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by our sins and for our salvation, 'is quite rightly considered the chief sign and symbol for that...love with which the divine Redeemer continually loves the eternal Father and all human beings' without exception." (CCC 478)The Incarnation is the central point of Christianity. We believe in a God who desired so much to encounter us, that He became one of us. He didn't send a mere messenger, He sent His Beloved Son, He came Himself.
We romanticize the earthly life of Jesus. Of course life would be easy if we were God, we think. And then we say that God couldn't actually understand our pain or suffering, because He never experienced something like this.
He experienced it all.
No, maybe your particular situation is not one that Jesus found Himself in. Yet on the cross He experienced the suffering of all humanity, in all its forms and intensity. The "But You're God" excuse only lasts for so long. Yes, you have grasped His divinity. Congratulations. Now grasp His humanity. It wasn't a mask or a mere appearance, it is a reality.
His human heart beats.
I love you.
It aches for humanity.
Yes, I suffer also.
It remains present to us so that we might embrace Him in a deeper way.
"The Body of Christ."
Your weary little heart needs to know that Christ has a heart like yours.
His heart is tender, vulnerable, open to love all.
This heart desires to dwell within you.
"After this He asked me for my heart, which I begged Him to take. He did so and placed it in His own Adorable Heart where He showed it to me as a little atom which was being consumed in this great furnace, and withdrawing it thence as a burning flame in the form of a heart, He restored it to the place whence He had taken it..." -St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
Sacred Heart of Jesus, sanctify my heart.
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