Contemplative Haven

Jun 29 2009

(Sacred) Heart of the World – 1

Published by gabrielle at 10:26 am under Sacred Heart of Jesus

You sense Time and yet have not sensed this Heart? You feel the stream of grace which rushes into you, warm and red, and yet have not felt how you are loved?

You seek for a proof, and yet you yourself are that proof. You seek to entrap Him, the Unknown One, in the mesh of your knowledge, and yet you yourself are entrapped in the inescapable net of his might. You would like to grasp, but you yourself are already grasped. You would like to overpower and are yourself being overpowered. You pretend to be seeking, but you have long (and for all time) been found. Through a thousand garments you feel your way to a living body, and yet you insist you cannot feel the hand that nakedly touches your bare soul? You jerk about in the haste of your unquiet heart and call it religion, when in truth these are the convulsions of a fish struggling on shipboard. You would like to find God even though it be with a thousand sorrows: what humiliation that your efforts were but an empty fuss, since he has long held you in his hand. Put your finger to the living pulse of Being. Feel the throbbing that in one single act of creation at once claims you and leaves you free. Feel the throbbing that, in the tremendous outpouring of existence, at the same time determines the precise measure of distance: how you ought to love him as your most intimate friend and how you ought to fall down before him as the all-high Lord; how in one and the same act he clothes you out of love and strips you out of love; how, along with existence, he presses all treasures into your hand, and the most precious jewel of all: to love him in return, to be able to give him a gift in return; and how he nevertheless (not afterwards, in a second movement, in a further step) again takes away everything he has given so that you love not the gift but the giver and so that you know, even in giving, that you are but a wave in his stream.

[Hans Urs von Balthasar, Heart of the World, pgs. 29-30]

[Painting: The Sacred Heart, by Odilon Redon, 1840-1916]

4 responses so far

4 Responses to “(Sacred) Heart of the World – 1”

# Carolon 29 Jun 2009 at 10:56 am

Ohmygoodness, I love scrolling down something like this and wondering whom it is… I had thought Kahlil Gibran, not least of all because of his Song of the Wave. I never would’ve guessed von Balthasar–and yet, after clinging for years to his Chapter 12 of the same book, one might’ve easily known! Is it any wonder that JP II loved this priest? Is it any wonder that I love Jesuits?

What a beautiful writing, Gabrielle. It is indeed a picture of our great struggle. It is horrible to have such a glorious gasp beaten out of us with other words, isn’t it?

The Lord is full of surprises. So are you.
# gabrielleon 29 Jun 2009 at 11:57 am

I would like to try to help people understand (through writers who express this truth) that the beating, pulsating, throbbing of Jesus’ Sacred Heart is very real, not just a poetic image or a metaphor in the spiritual life. That it is as real as our own – that it sustains us, and sustains the universe. And our struggle, yes – He gives and takes away, gives and takes away – and this is why Jesus pleads with us continually to trust him.
# Piaon 29 Jun 2009 at 12:49 pm

Thank you so much for these posts, Gab. You are a true treasure hunter! And it’s something I so needed to read. I am going to print out the Italian version I mentioned in another comment. That will be my summer reading this year..if I ever get to the beach, lol. If not I’ll read it at home!
# gabrielleon 29 Jun 2009 at 2:22 pm

That’s great, Pia! If anyone else would like to read Heart of the World and can’t find it at the library or elsewhere, I believe it is available at Ignatius Press. (hope you can get to the beach, though).