To live with hearts rent open.
Rend your hearts, and not your garments (Jl 2:13).
With February and Ash Wednesday, the season of Lent comes to us again.
As I looked at the readings for the Ash Wednesday Mass, these words from the first reading jumped out at me.
You may remember that last month I wrote about going into the marketplace of the world, going to where people are living and making their daily choices for or against God, and about staying there with the Lord in compassionate love and tender mercy.
There is more to say about this, and it all flows beautifully into this Lenten season, the Lenten journey, and the Lenten call to “rend our hearts, not our garments.” Because what can await us in the marketplace of the world, in whatever encounter each of us has with both the world’s light and beauty and its darkness and sin, is the great temptation that constitutes possibly the heart of the spiritual battle.
And this is the temptation: to close our hearts, both to others and to God. To lapse into coldness, hardness, and judgment. It is not incidental that throughout the Gospels, the Lord Jesus repeatedly warns us against the sin of judgment.
As we move through the world, where there is so much good but also so much evil and folly, the constant movement of our hearts is towards closure and withdrawal. At least that’s my experience.
So… rend your hearts. ‘Tis the season to do so. It is not an easy matter. The world, after all, is full of pain and sorrow. War in this country, massacres in that country, desperate poverty here, political oppression there. In our own countries and in our own immediate communities, there are specific problems and afflictions, and, of course, every one of us has the personal problems and sorrows life has dealt us.
But… rend our hearts. Let the world’s pain in, just a bit, as much or maybe even a little bit more than we can stand.
We are not God, not Jesus, and we cannot absorb the entire burden of all the pain of all humanity, but we can do what a little creature can do and carry, in compassionate service and ceaseless prayer, the small portion of it that is given to us. God will help us, especially if we are generous.
Rend our hearts… but then, also, there is so much evil in the world. Injustice, outrages, offenses against moral order of all kinds. Here our temptation to judgment can wax most strongly. Especially when it is the rich, the powerful, those in high office who commit these acts.
Rending our hearts in these matters is difficult. It seems to me the rending in this case is truly a matter of assuming our own share of responsibility for the evil of the world.
It is so easy — too easy by far! — to point a finger at this one or that one, especially those who loom largest in the headlines and news stories of the day. The trouble is that this doesn’t go anywhere.
We can all fulminate and fume and rage about this politician or that, this billionaire or that; we can even go into the murky waters of all the conspiracy theories out there on the internet and work ourselves up into high dudgeon about evils done in high places and low, real or imagined.
What good does that do? Honestly, can you tell me? Instead, how about choosing to rend our hearts and say “Lord Jesus Christ, be merciful to me, a sinner”— and mean it! Now, that is inviting the mercy of God to come down not only on us but on all humanity and perhaps especially on those with whom we are most indignant, most furious.
That is saying, “I too have sinned. I too have not loved as I ought. Come Lord, and wash me clean.” Rend our hearts to give an opening for God’s mercy to come in and from there, to go out even to the worst and the darkest.
There are so many ways to see this call of heart rending. As many ways as a heart can become closed, so the sword of the Spirit is needed to cleave it open. Complacency, self-satisfaction, the certainty that I’m doing just fine, thank you very much. Rend your heart.
Arrogance, the sureness that I, at least, am right; that those people are wrong and stupid, but I’ve got it all figured out. Rend, rend, rend. And on it goes: self-sufficiency, self-will, self-seeking, simply selfishness. Bring out the sword, bring out the scalpel.
We are meant to live with open hearts towards God — that is, hearts of constant surrender, trust, abandonment, childlike faith. We are also meant to live with open hearts towards every human being — compassionate, forgiving, humble, ready to serve, to love, even to die for that person.
And yes, this openness of heart is towards everyone, even those who have hurt us most deeply or those we hold most responsible for all the world’s ills.
So that is my Lenten suggestion to you, taken directly from the first words we hear on Ash Wednesday at Mass. Of course, it is a steep and rocky path, and we may not entirely succeed.
Certainly, our own efforts won’t get us there. And that is why the Lord himself comes to us with his own heart rent open for our sake, so that from his pierced heart grace comes forth to assist us and make all of this possible.
Let us keep our minds, hearts, and eyes focused on Christ crucified, so that in him we can find the courage and generosity to live with hearts rent open, filled with the compassionate love that alone can bring peace and healing to a world filled with so much strife and sorrow.
Calligraphy by Fr. Eric Lies
