The Enlightened Heart

Grieved for the blindness of their hearts.

Blindness of heart is a strange phrase. The heart feels, worries, loves, but does the heart see? And how can the heart be blind? For us the heart more commonly means the source of willing and feeling, less commonly the source of thinking. But in the Scripture the heart often has the meaning of mind; yet always with a shade of difference. When the mind thinks the truth may be bright and clear, but cold, like sunlight in the Arctic zone; when the heart thinks, the truth is warm, like sunlight in warmer zones. The will is never far away when there is talk about the heart, and when our Blessed Lady was pondering the words and deeds of her Son in her heart, it was, we may be sure, no idle reverie, but a deliberate act of the warmest love that made her think and kept her thinking. Knowledge precedes love and love precedes knowledge. We will to open our eyes, and we see to will some more.

Blindness of heart is a strange phrase, but it is a serious one, and implies a state that filled the gentle Lord with grief and anger. Witness the vivid picture given us by Saint Mark: "And looking round about on them with anger, being grieved for the blindness of their hearts." There was a lightning flash of anger in the glance which swept the circle of Pharisees on that eventful Sabbath, and that flash, or the look of sad pity which succeeded it, should have found its way through the blindness of even a Pharisaical heart. There was something of the same vexation, though tempered with more grief, when our Lord had to reproach His Apostles for blindness of heart. The Pharisees were blind because they would not see, but the Apostles were blind because they could not see. "Why do you reason, because you have no bread? Do you not yet know or understand? Have you still your heart blinded?"

There is a blindness of heart which closes its eyes to all light. Of such blindness there is scarcely question in the texts cited. There is, however, another blindness which falsifies the light, color-blindness, and another still which dims the light, a kind of short-sightedness. The Pharisees saw something. They saw the law. But like people whose eyes do not respond to red, they were blind to the spirit and the purpose of the law. The law is not an end in itself. It is made for a purpose; it exists for a purpose, and willfully to close one's eyes to that purpose is to be blind of heart. Christ gave them light enough. He taught them by reprehension, by action, by a miracle, by a clear and pointed statement of the spirit of the Sabbath law, but all this light was wasted on the Pharisees. Christ cured the withered hand before their eyes, and put his teaching into the terse balance of an epigram: "The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath." All in vain! The Pharisees "going out immediately made a consultation how they might destroy him."

What is this terrible blindness which can resist so much light? It is pride of will. No one is so blind as he who will not see. To admit that Christ was right was to confess that they were wrong, was to submit to His teaching, to obey His decisions, to make an open acknowledgement to their own little world that they were inferior to their new teacher. His words were clear; His proofs were convincing, but their wills were proud and stubborn. They did not simply cover their eyes or close them with lids which might readily part again. Rather they blinded themselves, refusing to yield free obedience to the teaching of Christ. The Pharisees plucked out the eye of their heart and would not see Christ's interpretation of the law. The Apostles were blind, too, but their blindness was due to a lack of light, not to a rejection of the light. Their vision had not been destroyed. It needed, however, to be rectified. When Christ told them to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, the Apostles understood Him literally, and were somewhat alarmed because most of their bakers belonged to the Pharisees. There was to be no more bread for them, they thought. Christ had to tell them that the leaven of the Pharisees meant the Pharisees hypocrisy, their evil doctrines, which would secretly permeate and corrupt the soul. He reminded His Apostles that He had fed thousands, and there were baskets of fragments over and above. But He talked to men whose spiritual eyesight was dim, whose souls were not lifted above the tangible and sensible, whose vision was hampered by the material and did not pierce to the spiritual. "Have you still your heart blinded?"

Blind of heart are those whose whole life is given to pleasures and to the gratification of the senses. Blind of heart are those who make wealth the only good and the supreme good. Blind of heart are those to whom applause is the sweetest of sounds, and a high position the greatest delight. All these do not savor the things of God. To speak to them of the delights of prayer, of the consolation of Communion, of peace of conscience, is to use a foreign language. They hear the words; they note the gestures; they cannot fathom the meaning. A man of no literary tastes cannot understand the enjoyment of poetry. It seems to him mid summer madness. A man of blinded heart looks on religion and its practices as so many mysteries, cannot imagine they possess any charm, and deems religious people weak-minded or unbalanced.

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The so-called nebular theory is a possible explanation of the universe; it may be true or further explanations may prove it false, but it will serve to illustrate a solidly established fact. The Incarnation witnessed the creation of another light, the light of the moral world. God had said: "Let there be light, and light was made." In the Incarnation He may be considered to have said, "Let there be love, and the Heart of Christ was made." If the primitive nebula, which theory conjectures, contained all the energy of the universe, the Heart of Christ which was God's love made flesh, is the burning source of all light, heat and motion in the universe of souls. Into the Heart of Christ was poured the ocean of God's love and out of It has flowed every drop of grace which has exercised an effect in this world. "Of His fulness we all have received." Out of the reservoir of His love, which God created for us at the Incarnation and opened for us upon the cross came the universe of grace, with its planets and suns and moons and constellations, that light up and adorn the firmament of the new creation, more brilliant than the firmament which God s Omnipotence arched over our head when He said, "Let there be light," and broader, be cause this arch stretches its span far into a horizonless eternity. From the brief splendor of the passing thought or wish which prompts to repentance or lights the way to higher virtue, even to the undimmed and steady radiance of the holiest soul s highest sanctity, all came from the fire kindled by the Heart of Christ. Apostles and missionaries carry that light into the darkness of paganism. Doctors and teachers explore with it the innermost recesses of baffling truths. The pastors of the Church from priest to Pope have the guidance of the light of the world when they lead their flocks along the ways which pass from night to eternal day. Christ is the light which enlightens every man that comes into the world, and the Heart of Christ is the center and source of that tremendous and unfailing energy. The light of the world was kindled into flame by the love of His Heart. In the narrower world of the blinded individual the Heart of Christ is the light, the healer of blindness. Christ became a victim to laws blindly interpreted. His Heart was laid open in obedience to law. That spear is the fit instrument, and fit emblem of the blind law. A blind law is cold, is edged with sharpness, is relentless. So was that spear. Pride may be broken; it refuses to bend. The spear of the Roman soldier will represent the pride which blinds hearts to the meaning of a law. Ah, but God's law came in obedience, in humility, in love; it came in a Heart. Wherever love goes with the law, there will be no blindness to the spirit of the law. When Christ's Heart was opened on the cross, all blind hearts won the power to open their closed eyes to the light and to see, just as Longinus, the centurion, s-aw the light and threw away his rigid spear and became a saint.

The loving heart will not be blind to the purpose of the law, and the loving heart will rightly interpret the meaning of the law. Love will cure color-blindness and short-sightedness. The heart never forgets the person for whose benefit the law is, for the law is not for the pride of the ruler but for the good of the ruled. The heart does not miss the meaning of the law. The eyes of charity see all and see deep. When the hearts of the Apostles had been prepared by living with Christ, by seeing Him die, by feeling His love and learning to love Him in turn, when, in a word, their hearts were made like His Heart, no longer did they misinterpret His meaning. With the instinct of love, as a mother divines the need of her child, they went to the meaning of Christ's words. Some hidden selfishness, perhaps the urgent thought of their bodily necessities, made the Apostles hearts blind when they heard their teacher speak of the leaven of the Pharisees. There was only one kind of a yeast for them. But when love ruled supreme, they went to the heart of things. They understood and were short-sighted no more.

To cure blindness perfectly there is need of two things: of good light and of good sight. The Heart of Christ furnishes both remedies in full perfection for blindness of heart. His Heart it was, Love Incarnate, that became the light of the world. His Heart it was that gave good eyes to the hearts of men by showing them that love must enforce the law and love must interpret the law. By dying under the spear-point of tyranny and ignorance, the Heart of Christ won the grace for all to see, and It became the medium for all to see, be came the crystal lenses of love rectifying the imperfect visions of men.