Cheryle Anne Miller

A HUMBLE HEART

When I ponder on the humility that You bear in allowing Yourself to be put into the host in this monstrance in front of me just waiting to be adored, You prepared Yourself for this in the suffering of being cramped in the womb of Mary.

Your beaten heart, You feed us with.  Your beautiful, humble heart.  Your heart that longs for each soul as if you cannot bear to be without them.  Your heart which burns with flames and graces that are rejected by your children. 

This suffering heart began way before your crucifixion.  It started in the Garden of Eden with our first parents.  Since the fall in the Garden, you have been wooing your children like a shepherd who entices a runaway sheep with a juicy apple, not the apple of death which the serpent gave to Eve, but the apple of life, Your heart.  Your beautiful, humble, spotless heart.  The same heart that you feed to us every day at mass in the hopes that we will allow You to transform us.

Oh, Holy Redeemer, there is nothing you wouldn’t do to save the lost sheep.  You proved this on the cross.  You took on our sins gladly because your heart was set on our salvation.  Your tears for us were weary tears of rejection, burning tears of love.  Like St Francis of Assisi said, “Look and see how love is not loved.”  My heart shutters at the thought of all the pain within your Sacred Heart, pain you allow Yourself to feel for love of us.  For to love is to endure pain. In order not to have pain, you cannot love.  The end result is hardening of the heart.

You are love itself, Your very essence burns of love!!  The more You love, the more pain you endure because of love.

I, as a mother, love my children so deeply and when one of them is hurt, it’s like someone just tore my heart to smithereens.  How can I even begin to endure this pain?  It’s only the cross that I see, for You embraced Your pain because You are all love.  Love and pain go hand and hand.  This is precisely why suffering and pain are gifts of love sent from a Savior who annihilates Himself everyday by feeding us over and over with His tortured heart.  In the hopes that one day we may crack open the heavy-dead bolted door of our heart to let Him in.

Let Him reside in Your broken, tattered, restless heart.  For when He does, rivers of joy will overflow in it washing away the heavy dead-bolted door and replacing it with a field of flowers that goes for miles and miles.  Yes, you will feel pain again, but this time you don’t have to feel it alone.