The New Heart: Jesus' Heart

The Eucharist is the source and summit of life; it is the antidote to sin and death; it unites us to God, the True Vine: “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). What fruit does a vine produce? Grapes. What do grapes produce? Wine. What happens to the grapes to make wine? They have to be crushed. We produce good fruit, but even that, in a sense, needs to be crushed and offered back to God. But even more than our good fruit, we ourselves need to die: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). It is in our dying that we have life; in dying to self we live to God.

In each of the four gospels Jesus says: “Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Luke 17:13). How did sin and death enter the world? “Through the devil’s envy death entered the world” (Wisdom 2:24). The devil deceived the woman, and according to my theory, encouraged her to get the child she wanted through relations with her husband. There was nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but God had asked them to not do so in order for Him to provide the child directly. Through her fear of not having children and passing on life, through her fear of death, sin entered the world. The letter to the Hebrews states: “that through death he [Jesus] might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage” (Hebrews 2:14-15). It was the man and woman’s fear of not having children that led them to not trust God, put their trust in the serpent and the power of their own bodies, disobey God’s only command, and sin. They sought to gain their life, and so they lost it. They were trying to get a child, so they named him “gotten,” which is Cain. They forsook the tree of life, which is a trusting heart, and they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and bore a son of man, Cain, the murderer of his brother. They sought freedom from God’s law and found themselves in lifelong bondage to sin and the serpent.

In order for us to have life, we need to not fear death. In order for us to bear fruit, we must die like the grain of wheat. That is what Jesus did on the cross: “And he said to all, ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me’ ” (Luke 9:23). If we take up our cross and follow Jesus with His cross, where is He leading us? Where did He go when He took up His cross? He is leading us to Calvary to our very own crucifixion. How do we endure and have the heart to follow Him there? Through the Eucharist, for in it He gives us His heart, the very heart that led Him to lay down His life for us, the very heart that gave everything even to the point of death and being totally poured out in blood and water when it was pierced by a lance.

The man and the woman closed their heart to God and trusted in themselves and their powers of generation for life. And they brought death and sin and bondage to the world. Unlike the man and the woman, Mary and Joseph united their hearts entirely to God while they faced the death of childlessness square in the face as they embraced virginity for life; they gave up relations and children as its normal fruit, and as such their greatest earthly desires were crucified; they were rewarded with the very thing they sacrificed; they were rewarded beyond their wildest imagination with the Son of God. Unlike Adam, Jesus did not trust in the power of His physical body and His generative powers to give life; instead, He gave up His body completely on the cross, trusting that His Father would raise Him from the dead and give Him life. Because Jesus ate of the tree of life, because He had an obedient and trusting heart, He said to His Father: “Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). His heart, His tree of life, led Him to forsake the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and to embrace the tree upon which He was hung.

The Eucharist is that Heart, the very Heart of Jesus, the Tree of Life which gives life and true freedom to the world. His Heart enables you and me to imitate Him, even unto our death for love of Him. Jesus dies not so that we don’t have to; He dies so that we may be empowered to also offer our entire selves even to death as He did. Most of us are not tested with the test of virginity (priests and religious are), but each of us is tested by God. Most tests are the simple tasks He entrusts to us each day. Most of our trials involve the people and places we encounter all the time. He gives us His own Eucharistic Heart to be faithful in all of them, big and small. In such faithfulness saints are made.

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Copyright 2007.