11/16/2018 2 Comments lift up your hearts Our culture is inundated with messages about the importance our hearts. Think of pretty much any Disney movie you've ever watched; themes run from 'Let your heart be your guide,' to 'Be true to your heart,' to 'a dream is a wish your heart makes.' Think about the kind of commercials we see, you know the ones I mean- you're watching a commercial about a puppy with a little boy, then the scene shifts and the dog is a little older and the boy's a teenager, it shifts again and the boy is a young adult and the dog is greying around the muzzle and clearly has arthritis. The young man puts the dog on the leash and brings him out to the car where the dog happily sits in the front seat with him. Meanwhile, you're left sniffling and pretending you've got a hunk of dust in your eye. What's this commercial trying to sell you? A car. I can say with complete honesty that when I think about buying a car, I want to buy a Subaru.
We like to think that we are really great rational thinkers. We like to believe that the decisions we make are thought out with great care but research shows this is not really the case. Neuroscientists and Psychologists agree that when it comes to decision making, we aren't making decisions with our heads at all; we are making them with our hearts (even when we think the opposite is true). There is a lot of wisdom in this sentiment. Our metaphorical hearts are the center for our emotions, the center for our decision making, the place out of which comes love and hate, joy and anger. It's why scripture mentions the heart over and over, encouraging us to keep our hearts fixed on the Lord, telling us to love the Lord with our whole heart, and cautioning us to guard our hearts. The word "heart" comes up over 725 times in the Bible- that's a lot! (For comparison's sake, the word "love" only appears just over 680 times in scripture.) So, by this point you are probably wondering to yourself where I'm headed with this; you're probably asking 'wasn't this week's session about liturgy?' And you're right, it was, so let me tell you why I am writing about the heart. We offer a lot of things when we come to Mass, you know this. The first, most obvious, thing we offer is money during 'offer'tory. We offer the gifts of bread and wine for the Eucharist. Some of you might even say you offer praise and worship in prayer and in song; we offer our gifts and talents, we offer our words and thoughts. Mass is a constant dialogue between the Lord and us, it is a reminder of the sacrifice He made and it's our 'sacrifice' we offer in return. There's this great passage in Hebrews chapter 10 that is basically summed up like this: In the Old Testament, the Israelite Priests offered "blood" (animals) sacrifices to atone for sins and reunite themselves to God. But in the Letter to the Hebrews Paul tells us that God takes no pleasure in that sort of sacrifice, rather Jesus (the Lamb of God, the unblemished sacrifice) was offered once for the forgiveness of all. No longer do we have priests who offer sacrifices for us and commandments on stone tablets, rather we have the one perfect sacrifice in Jesus and the commands of the Lord written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit. He goes on to tell us that we should offer a fitting sacrifice of praise. I could write a lot of things that I find beautiful at Mass, but I want to stay focused on our hearts. There is a part of the Mass that gets me every single time I go. After Father gets everything laid out for Communion he says "Pray brothers and sisters that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Father Almighty." we reply "May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands for the praise and glory of His name, for our good and the good of all His holy church." He says a little prayer in response, then the priest says these words: "Lift up your hearts." We respond with, "We lift them up to the Lord." This part speaks to me every single time I hear it and it has since I was a kid. I think it's always stood out to me because it implies that our hearts are part of the sacrifice (with the bread and the wine) that we are making to the Lord. In this moment in Mass, I am always overcome by the profound challenge it is for me when I stop to think about what exactly those words mean. It's a challenge because when I say that I am lifting my heart up to the Lord, I am in essence saying that I want Him to transform my heart in the way He transforms those little wafers into his body and that red wine into His blood. When I say that I am lifting up my heart, I am saying that I am giving Him my emotions. I'm giving Him my passions, I'm giving Him my anger, I'm giving Him my joy, my pain, my desires, my sorrows, and everything in between. In giving Him my heart and thus my emotions, I am essentially giving up any illusion I had of control over my life. It is this moment in Mass, when I am offering up my heart, that I find myself completely overwhelmed by what it feels like to surrender my will to the One who made all of heaven and earth. There is almost invariably a struggle as a tiny corner of my mind says, "well not this part, this part is mine." There's inevitably a little (or big) part of my heart and emotions that think, "I've got this, there's no need for God there." but the truth is that those are always the places I most need to surrender to God. I think the word "surrender" has gotten a bad rap. I hear that word and I picture wars, I picture people holding up a white flag, and giving up a claim to something they've fought desperately for. When I hear the word surrender what I see is people losing. In a way, that is true of surrendering to God, too. In a way, I am giving up something (or a lot of somethings). I am giving up my autonomy, I am giving up my stubbornness, I am giving up pride. When I surrender to God, I am giving up a lot of things that make me who I am on a day to day basis. But here's the key: I am not just losing something when I surrender, I am gaining something. When I surrender my heart to God, I am overcome with a peace the world cannot give, I am overcome with love and forgiveness (for myself and for others). When I surrender my heart, it doesn't feel like I am losing something because God doesn't take it and keep my offering for himself. He takes my heart, just as he takes the bread and wine, and he transforms it before giving it back to me, still my heart but somehow more. This is the beauty of liturgy for me, this is the beauty of Mass. When we fully enter into liturgy, with our whole heart (not just our body, heart-lessly going through the motions) we come in contact with the Lord and we leave changed. When we surrender, we receive more than we can possibly comprehend. This week, I pray that you will enter into the liturgy and come away with something that speaks to you on a new level. I pray that you will have a powerful experience of the God who literally died to experience communion with you. May God bless your week and bless your holiday. Peace, Michaela
2 Comments
Leah Kondes
11/17/2018 08:25:26 am
I missed you guys this week! Look forward to seeing you after Thanksgiving if not sooner.
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Michele Swarthout
12/19/2018 07:42:28 pm
Absolutely beautiful.
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