On flaming hearts that are not consumed

There’s a story about St. Augustine. He’s walking on the beach near Carthage, wrestling with intellectual ideas for the book he’s working on about the Holy Trinity. He sees a small boy running back and forth from the Mediterranean Sea to a spot on the sand. The boy is carrying seawater in a shell and pouring it into a hole dug in the sand. The boy tells Augustine, “I’m emptying the sea into this hole.” Augustine replies, “But that’s impossible, my dear child, the hole cannot contain all that water.” The boy pauses, looks at the famous theologian and bishop, and says, “It is no more impossible than what you are attempting, to comprehend the immensity of mystery in the Holy Trinity with your small mind.” Augustine, amazed, averts his eyes for a moment. When he looks back, the boy is vanished.

When it comes to our faith, there’s very much a cooperation of intellect and the will. We know God and we love God. To have intellectual knowledge of something is to possess a certain facility at describing its externals – how it functions, how the software operates, how the brain works, what the formula is, what makes it go, what makes it stop, and so on. There’s another kind of complementary knowledge, though, which is interior. This is poetic knowledge and it is much harder to verbalize because it is caused by a movement of the will, growth in virtue, and the insights provided by beauty and love.

Our goal is to know God in order to better love him, and to love God so we can better know him. It’s a beneficial feedback loop. We strive to know our catechism but, at some point, our minds are like that hole in the sand. They aren’t big enough. We have description of the Trinity, but in the end our knowledge must seek deeper waters, a matter of the heart as well as the mind.

There’s a reason that I rarely preach purely catechetical homilies. I was talking with another priest the other day and he said that, when he was younger, he preached catechetical homilies on controversial topics because he thought the faithful were lacking knowledge about Catholic beliefs. As he got older, he realized that knowledge wasn’t the primary issue and a homily isn’t enough time to dig into a lot of those topics anyway. Over time, he realized that many of the faithful were missing an active prayer life. There was a lack of movement of the heart, a lack of the will moving from the exterior signs of the faith and towards participating in the presence of Christ. So now in his homilies he spends his time trying to unveil the reality of the inner life created by the love of Christ. A heart that is on fire for Christ will naturally gravitate towards trying to understand the teachings of the Church, and that happens in Bible studies, small groups, listening to lectures, reading books, and so on.

In the early days after my conversion to Catholicism, I spent a lot of time learning the catechism. During Mass, I watched closely to learn how to pray as a Catholic – when to make the sign of the cross, when to kneel, what the words, “Agnus dei” mean, and so on. Then, in the early days of my priesthood, I again spent time learning how to say the Mass – what movements to make, how to dress, how to sing. I needed to understand the dogmas, the form of the liturgy, the rules for how a priest behaves at the altar – I was acquiring knowledge. It couldn’t stay at that level, though, otherwise my faith would be a lifeless thing, merely going through the motions and assuring myself that I’ve marked off the correct answer on the test.

Three years ago, in a homily I never delivered [insert rant here about spring of 2020 and why Mass is the most essential activity of our lives], I described celebrating my first Mass. I remember going weak in the knees with the sacredness of it. With each word of the consecratory prayer, we draw dangerously close to a divine fire that could burn us to ash. Perhaps this is why St. John Vianney says that, if we really understood the Mass, we would die of joy. Beneath the symbols, beyond what our senses reveal, beyond the appearances of the bread and wine, at every single Mass, clutched between the priest’s sinful and imperfect fingers is a burning reality that blazes white hot.

At the most tense moment of the Mass, the priest bows low over the altar. When his elbows touch it, he merges his life with the sacrifice of the altar. He becomes one with the crucified Body of Christ and only then does he whisper the words of our great High Priest, “Hoc est enim Corpus/This is my Body.” At that instant, my face is mere inches from God. There I am, with the weight of eternity in my hands. This can be nothing but grace. I don’t really understand how it works, to be honest.

This is the same reality you receive in the Eucharist. The Living God crosses an infinite distance and nourishes you with such a powerful grace I don’t know how we can hardly stand it. It’s an incomparable, divine moment. It is also an incomparably human moment. Not only are we united with Christ but also with each other. We eat of the same Body, and you are the very closest that you can possibly be to your brothers and sisters in Christ, closer than ever to the living and the dead and the whole multitude of saints.

On the road to Emmaus, shortly after the death of Our Lord, two disciples leaving Jerusalem are joined by a fellow traveler. As they walk, they talk, and the disciples express their grief over the crucifixion. The stranger then takes up the Scriptures and gives them knowledge. He teaches them how to understand the Word of God. They ask the stranger to stay with them, for the day is almost over. It’s as if the sun is setting on their faith. They’re lost, wandering back to an old life. The stranger agrees to stay and they sit down for a meal. He picks up the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it. It is a Mass. The stranger is the resurrected Christ. Their intellectual discussion has prepared them for this moment. Their hearts burn within their chests.

There’s a famous image of St. Augustine holding his own burning heart. His soul has become a burnt offering. In ancient Israel, a burnt offering was the supreme sacrifice, symbolizing total commitment to God. God’s heart is on fire for us and, in our hearts, we light a fire in return.

The fire burns, but the heart is not consumed. It’s like the burning bush, a sign that, in Christ, two realities are held together – this life and the next. Humanity has been assumed into the divinity of Christ and through him our sacrifice is made worthy. If the faith of those disciples at Emmaus had been growing dark, the fire of this sacrifice lights it up again.

The poet Hafez has a lyrical meditation on love in which he writes:

When I am dead, open my grave and see
The cloud of smoke that rises round your feet
In my dead heart the fire still burns for thee.

His love survives everything. His heart remains aflame even in death. Hafez wasn’t a Christian but perhaps we might put it even more strongly – it is precisely that sacrificial loving heart united to Our Lord’s that carries us into the next life. As the Psalmist says, “even in the night my heart exhorts me.”

Rilke expands on that thought, writing;

Break off my arms, I shall take hold of you
And grasp you with my heart as with a hand;
Arrest my heart, my brain will beat as true;
And if you set this brain of mine afire,
Then on my blood-stream I yet will carry you.

The heart which symbolizes love encompasses everything. That love purifies the mind, showing that knowledge and love go together always. Know Christ and love him.

Lord Jesus, make our hearts like thine.

Want the Sunday homily delivered to your inbox so you never miss one? Sign up below.