“with all your heart”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says that the greatest and first commandment is “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.” These words: love, heart, soul and mind are all terms that are commonly used to signify many different meanings. Before we can live out this command of Our Lord we must first know what He means by these words.
What is love? As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI points out in his encyclical God is Love (Deus Caritas Est), there is a problem with our language when we look at the word love. “Today, the term “love” has become one of the most frequently used and misused of words, a word to which we attach quite different meanings.” [1] In the Greek language there are three separate words for love each expressing a distinct type of love. First, is the term eros that refers to the passionate love between a man and a woman neither planned nor willed. Second, is the idea of philia, which means the love of friendship. Lastly, is agape signifying a love of choice and self-giving.
This lesson is one of three lessons on heart, soul and mind with a focus on the heart.
What is the heart? The heart is commonly defined, as the center of emotions, affections and desires. “With close custody guard your heart, for in it are the sources of life.” (Proverbs 4:23) Our heart is the source of our life in the sense that we seek to fulfill the desires of our hearts and we direct our lives according to these desires. We also associate passion with the heart since it is the seat of our emotions and that ties into the beatitude of “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for holiness”. (Matthew 5:6) Our hearts are hungering and thirsting for something and we seek to satisfy that hunger and quench that thirst. When we gaze at the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we see Christ’s heart that is burning out of love for us.
Our hearts hunger for freedom and yet it is our hearts that will enslave us when we hunger and thirst for created goods rather than the Creator of goods. There is a great story of a religious brother whose Father had a choice to leave communist East Germany and move his family to freedom in West Germany. The Father had heard of the materialism and consumerism in the West and also the loss of faith because of it, while he knew that in the East that families held onto the Faith because of the communist government’s persecution. He decided to keep his family in East Germany, under communists rule and keep their Faith rather than chance his family loosing the Faith, yet gaining “freedom.” We are free, when our hearts are hungry for Christ. As Pope St. John Paul II reminded us, “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.” [2]
In Egyptian mythology, “…the feather was a symbol of Ma'at, the goddess of truth and order. The goddess was always shown wearing an ostrich feather in her hair. The feather by itself was her emblem. In art, the feather was shown in scenes of the Hall of Ma'at. This hall is where the deceased was judged for his worthiness to enter the afterlife. The seat of the deceased's soul, his heart, was weighed on a balance against the feather of Ma'at. If the heart was free from the impurities of sin, and therefore lighter than the feather, then the dead person could enter the eternal afterlife.” [3] We can learn a lot from the pagan Egyptians who are not completely in the dark regarding truth, as Saint Paul says, “For what can be know about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them.” (Romans 1:19) Although the Egyptians did not know the fullness of the Revelation of God, they did realize that the heart must be free from the impurities of sin. The heart must be pure in order and in truth to enter the afterlife. This is similar to the Christian beatitude, “Blessed are the pure of heart, they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8)
What does our heart hunger for? What is the object of our emotions, affections, desires, what is their end? If the final end and object of our affections, desires and emotions is not God, then what is it? We must remember that God created us for Himself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him. We will not find true happiness in any other thing, person or place that exists. If God is not our end, we must re-align our heart with truth and put our emotions, affections and desires in order. The spiritual reading speaks about the order of the universe and how the Creator has put all the seasons, plants, oceans and all of creation in order. We must humble our self and remember that we too our part of God’s creation. We in turn must be ordered by God and this order means that our passions, affections, desires and emotions are in order, in truth and have God has their object and end. It is then that our hearts will be pure and see God; it is then that our hearts will have the correct hunger and thirst and be able to be satisfied.
What does the heart have to do with loving God? We must realize that in order to love God we must renounce our own self and give our entire self to God. We love God by surrendering to Him our wills, our affections, our desires and our very hearts. If we love God with all of our heart then we would love Him over and above everything else in our lives, more than anyone or anything else. Do we have a passionate desire for God? Our affections, passions and desires are easily turned from God toward self, others and things of the world. The virtue and fruit of the Holy Spirit, self-control along with the virtue of temperance help us to keep our affections, passions and desires (our heart) centered on God.
[1] Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, God is Love (Deus Caritas Est), page 5
[2] Pope St. John Paul II; 1995 Homily in Baltimore, MD
[3] http://www.egyptianmyths.net/feather.htm