Live Out of the Heart

Recently Pope Francis released a papal encyclical called Dilexit Nos (He Loved Us). In this letter, Francis speaks movingly about the need for a return to the heart. The heart, he says, “shapes my spiritual identity and puts me in communion with other people.” (14) He adds, “In this age of artificial intelligence, we cannot forget that poetry and love are necessary to save our humanity.” (20) The heart is the spot in us that unifies us as individuals and that unifies us to God.

In Dilexit Nos, Pope Francis reminds us that St. Ignatius and the Spiritual Exercises are all about desire, that deep desire that a retreatant has, in undertaking prayer, to rearrange life to become closer to God and to live in greater love of others. But Ignatius also knew that, during our prayer, God sometimes breaks in and speaks in our hearts, sometimes in unexpected ways, calling into question that which we thought we knew but needed to see differently.

When I think about being challenged to see things differently, I think of Fr. Gregory Boyle’s book, Tattoos on the Heart, in which he talks about compassion in his work in a gang intervention program. He describes compassion in the following way:

Jesus says if you love those who love you, big wow…He doesn’t suggest that we cease to love those who love us when he nudges us to love our enemies. Nor does Jesus think that the harder thing is the better thing. He knows it’s just the harder thing. But to love the enemy and to find some spaciousness for the victimizer, as well as the victim, resembles more the expansive compassion of God. (67)

We can be God’s love in the world.

Something that I like about Boyle’s approach is that he does not think it is only the people who serve others that are the ones who embody the love of God, while others are just the recipients of that love. So often the script is flipped. That is one of the things that we need to see differently when we live out of the heart. Over and over again, the very same people that others might think just need God’s love turn out to be the ones who also embody it: a gang member who shows hope after the death of a friend, giving Boyle hope too, or a man who becomes a great father after having not been parented well himself and shows exemplary love.

I also can think of times in my visits to a spirituality group in prison, when the men have been the real teachers, opening a new side to spirituality or a new insight in a reading we are doing together. One time I witnessed an older man talking with a younger incarcerated man who struggled with anger. The older man skillfully talked the younger through his feelings, with great patience, and I was reminded to be more patient with my then-teenager’s moods. I’ve experienced the daily hospitality of those men in prison as they offered coffee and tea to visitors or kindness to first-timers who are nervous about volunteering at a prison. God’s love is visible in the people who are supposedly being served.

One of the ways we can live out of the heart, as I understand Pope Francis, is to let ourselves see others differently. We are called not only to love those whom others might not easily love, but also to remember that in those same people’s hearts, God’s love is alive there too.

Photo by Shera Banerjee on Pexels.