Heart to Heart

Romans 5:5  “Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us”.
Jubilee: Young adults

We have the Holy Spirit; we have the love of God. Good! But where does He come to dwell? Where do we welcome Him? In the heart, in our hearts!

In this Jubilee for young adults, we want to address this meditation specifically to them: Pope Leo XIV, speaking to the youth (to seminarians), recently (June 24th) spoke to them exactly about this topic: the heart.

“As Christ loved with a human heart, so you are called to love with the heart of Christ!” said the Pope.

• In the Heart of Christ and in the human heart we are called to love.
  Do I want to? _____ Why?___________________________

Pope Leo continues: “But to learn this art, one must work on one’s interiority, where God makes his voice heard and where the deepest decisions start. Without the interior life, even the spiritual life is not possible, because God speaks to us right there in the heart.”

• Interior life takes work. This work allows us to hear the voice of God and to make decisions of the heart.
• What decisions am I called to make in this period of time? ______________

“Part of this interior work is also training to learn to recognize the movements of the heart: not only the quick and immediate emotions that characterize the soul of the young, but especially your feelings, which help you discover the direction of your life. If you learn to know your heart, you will be more and more authentic and will not need to put on masks.”

• What are the movements of the heart? They are what we recognize in us when, for example, we read a Scripture passage or the life of a saint, when we have an experience, when we are before art or nature, when we live our relationships… Let’s do a little exercise: reread Romans 5:5.
• What feelings move in me? _____________________
• What thoughts? ___________________________________
• What desires stir up in my heart? ___________________________

“And the privileged road that leads us into interiority is prayer: in an age when we are hyper-connected, it becomes increasingly difficult to experience silence and solitude. Without the encounter with Him, we cannot even truly know ourselves.”

• Prayer allows us to enter into our hearts, where God speaks. Most likely, when we indicated above what movements of the heart were stirred up in us while reading Romans 5:5, we did so in a hurry, reasoning with ourselves. The experience of prayer doesn’t just open us to personal reflection but also to relationship. Let us seek a moment of silence and solitude in which we can enter into the intimacy of a heart to heart with the Lord.
  • If the place where I am now, while I read this meditation, is not silent or if I am distracted by many things, I can try to find another moment and place today or tomorrow in which I can stop to pray for a peaceful and prolonged time (let’s say for at least 10 minutes). I stop now to fix in my calendar a time and place to restart this meditation at a more conducive moment.
    • When is a time that I could be recollected between today and tomorrow? ______________
    • Where is a good place for me to savor the Word of God with Him? _______________

“I invite you- continues Pope Leo- to invoke the Holy Spirit frequently, that He may mold in you a docile heart, capable of grasping God’s presence.”

• Once I arrive at the time and place of my appointment with the Lord, to begin my prayer, I invoke the Holy Spirit, who is the love of God that was given to us and has come to dwell in my heart.

Come, O Creator Spirit,
visit our minds.
Fill with your grace
the hearts you have created.

“If you take care of your hearts, with daily moments of silence, meditation and prayer, you can learn the art of discernment. When we are young, we carry within us so many desires, so many dreams and ambitions. The heart is often crowded and it happens that we feel confused. Instead, modeled after the Virgin Mary, our interiority must become capable of keeping and meditating all in the heart. Capable of synballein – as the evangelist Luke writes (2:19, 51): putting together the fragments”. (cf. Dilexit nos, Pope Francis’ Encyclical on the Heart of Jesus, which I suggest to you).

• Let us speak to the Lord who dwells in our hearts about the movements we recognize there.
• Let us now resume our passage in prayer and go deeper: “Now hope does not disappoint, for God’s love has been shed in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Rom 5:5.
• Let us speak to the Lord , who dwells in our hearts, about the movements we recognize in it.
  • I tell you Lord (not by mere reasoning within myself) what the Word I am listening touches in my heart:
    • Lord, these are the feelings in me ______
    • Lord, this thought came to me ________
    • Lord, as I read, this desire is born in me_____

“Beware of superficiality, and put together the fragments of life in prayer and meditation, asking yourself: 

• What is what I am experiencing teaching me? 
• What is it saying to my path? 
• Where is the Lord leading me?”
• Lord, help me to put together the fragments of what I find within me, of the movements of my heart, of what you reveal to me in the Word, of the cry from the world that reaches my ears and calls me into action….

“Keeping our gaze on Jesus, we must learn to give name and voice even to sadness, fear, anguish, indignation, bringing everything into relationship with God. Crises, limitations, frailties are not to be hidden; rather, they are opportunities for grace and Easter experience.

I hope this meeting of ours- concludes Pope Leo- will help each of you to deepen your personal dialogue with the Lord, in which to ask him to assimilate more and more the feelings of Christ, the feelings of his Heart. That Heart that throbs with love for you and for all humanity.”

• We conclude today’s experience in which we prayed with the passage of Romans 5:5 with these additional steps in our relationship with Jesus:
  • Lord, what about You, how do You feel? What do you think? What do You desire?
  • I remain silent, listening to Your Heart.
  • I respond as I can to His call today, loving with the love that the Holy Spirit has placed in my heart and which suggests me to______________
  • Thank You, Lord, for the time we have spent together, for the hope that the presence of Your Spirit in my heart gives me: the Hope of not being alone, of knowing You, of knowing myself and discerning in what ways I too can love. And the hope of__________

If we have found this experience of intimacy with the Lord fruitful and want to repeat it, we can also find a space for Him tomorrow (even every day!), choose other Gospel passages and retrace today’s steps, often invite the Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts and taste His presence in silence.

This month’s meditation is by Sr. Clara, AVI.