As we emerge from the desert of Lent and enter Holy Week, I have one question for you to ponder:
Who is Jesus to you?
As the shepherd of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, this question is what keeps me up at night. Your personal, lived relationship with Jesus Christ is of utmost importance to me. So much so that my vision for the archdiocese begins with him: We envision a time when all know Christ, promote human dignity and transform society.
So, do you know Jesus Christ? Not just about him — facts, figures, bible verses, which are all very important — but do you know Jesus, the Son of the living God? Or maybe he is a nice guy that other people talk about. Perhaps he’s some distant teacher whom you know is central to our faith. Or maybe he is a friend you have lost touch with.
If we are to answer that question honestly, we must learn how to relate to him — not only to think about him.
How can we possibly have a relationship with Jesus, the second person of the Trinity? Over the last couple of millennia, many saints have given us a deeper understanding of prayer — that central conduit by which we live our relationship with God. Permit me to draw from the motto of St. John Henry Newman, the writings of St. Francis de Sales and the Church’s devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus to give you a sense of sustaining this most important relationship.
The phrase cor ad cor loquitur — “heart speaks to heart” — beautifully captures a central current running through the spirituality of St. John Henry Newman, St. Francis de Sales and the Church’s devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. St. John Henry Newman, who took cor ad cor loquitur as his motto, was a student of St. Francis de Sales’ writings, where this phrase was first found. “Heart speaks to heart” expresses a profoundly personal vision of faith: God does not save us through abstract ideas but by speaking directly to the human heart.
This heart-to-heart exchange is possible because the God of the universe knows and loves you personally and distinctly. To ponder the question “Do you know Jesus?” is to come to the very center of yourself. To ask life’s deepest questions — Who am I? What is my purpose? Who am I for others? Who am I for God? — is ultimately to return to the heart.
In his “Treatise on the Love of God,” St. Francis de Sales noted that prayer is the foundation of meeting with Jesus, where “its conversation is altogether secret, and there is nothing said in it between God and the soul save only from heart to heart, by a communication incommunicable to all but those who make it.” St. Francis de Sales continues with, “Eyes speak to eyes, and heart to heart, and none understand what passes save the sacred lovers who speak.” Prayer becomes a silent exchange beyond ordinary speech, where love communicates through sighs, tears, longing and quiet attentiveness.
It is our heart speaking to God’s heart that grounds us in relationship with him. Faith is above all a relationship — a heart-to-heart friendship with Christ that transforms us.
It is much like the legend of the Salt Doll — an image upon which I draw often — that enters the ocean in order to discover what it is. As the doll journeys further in, it slowly dissolves — losing itself as it comes to know the ocean. In the same way, as we journey into God, we lose the illusion of separateness and the ability to pretend or hide. We come to realize there is nowhere we can go where God is not. In this “loss,” we are not losing our distinctiveness but growing into the love for which we were made.
Human fulfillment is found not in superficial satisfactions but in love, for we are created to love and be loved. As Pope Francis wrote in Dilexit nos, “if love reigns in our heart, we become, in a complete and luminous way, the persons we are meant to be, for every human being is created above all else for love. In the deepest fibre of our being, we were made to love and to be loved.”
Could Jesus be knocking on the door of your heart to bring you into a new and more abundant life?
For me, Jesus Christ is my identity and the mirror that I hold up and desire to emulate. In the words of St. John the Baptist, “he must increase, I must decrease.” I am the Salt Doll, so to speak, who desires to lose itself in the ocean while in search of God.
Scripture expresses this transformation in the Epistle to the Galatians: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
Nowhere does the heart of Jesus speak more clearly than from the cross.
When Christ’s love dwells within us so fully that our hearts begin to beat with his, we cannot help but draw others into the transforming friendship of God. As we enter the Paschal Mystery, may our prayer echo that of St. Francis de Sales: “O make my heart beat with Thy Heart.”
