Breaking Containment

Our shared and sacred heart is on fire

In Dilexit nos, Francis suggests that the Word of God is “living and active” and, in the words of Saint Paul, “able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12). For Francis, the heart is our core. It is the essence of our identity and “lies hidden beneath all outward appearances.” The heart is where God speaks and we hear. It’s inward.

In The Crucified God Moltmann emphasizes that our spiritual practice needs to bring us into contact with others because “the question of identity comes to a head only in the context of non-identity, self-emptying for the sake of others and solidarity with others” (17). We empty out, turn out, towards the world.

So when I hold these two men together, I find myself seeking an interior grace (an understanding, an enlightenment, a motivation) that transforms me into a servant of Christ, capable of meeting my brothers and sisters - broadly defined to include raspberry bushes, chickadees and pine forests - in as loving a way as I can.

This might mean trimming less of the bracken back so that local birds will not lose a favorite feeding and nesting ground. They, too, are God’s little ones. But it can also mean refusing the easy comforts of citizenship in empire, and actively seeking to broaden the space of safety and happiness for all people, all life, even at personal expense.

I am not especially gifted at any of this. The road is long and I am still on it. But I am not discouraged. I’m grateful that I can be in relationship with Christ, and through Christ with you, so that with you, we can nudge us all a little closer to happiness and freedom from fear and lack.

For Moltmann, following Christ means constantly emptying onself of shallow goals and petty grievances in order to practice solidarity with the least among us - the lost, forsaken and vulnerable. Yet also for Moltmann that practice inevitably means one runs headlong into “contradiction, resistance and opposition.” It’s easy to space out in front of a screen rather than weed a garden or visit a nursing home. And it’s even harder to notice the way our selfishness and indifference serves worldly systems that oppose love, peace and understanding.

Moltmann decries the indifference into which I am so easily slip. His emphasis on crucifixion insists that God cannot not be found in sites of unjust, even incomprehensible, suffering. If you want to know God, then go where God goes, and be with the ones whom God is with. “Contradiction, resistance and opposition” are invitations to relationship with Christ. They are where the relationship lives.

Moltmann scares me. He points to confrontations with power that are painful, to a vulnerability and uncertainty that doesn’t easily resolve. The temptation is to dismiss him through intellecting - to write essays about the Jesuit martyrs in El Salvador, to read Gutiérrez-Merino Díaz and fall in love with liberation theology. These are fine activities in and of themselves, and there is nothing inherently wrong with them. They are not crimes against God or nature.

But the heart at which Francis gestures isn’t satisified so easily. Look again at your fear of Moltmann, says Francis. Sit with it without judging it. Be in relationship with it. Is anything else going on?

The disciples of Emmaus, on their mysterious journey in the company of the risen Christ, experienced a moment of anguish, confusion, despair and disappointment. Yet, beyond and in spite of this, something was happening deep within them: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road?” (Lk 24:32) (Dilexit nos 4).

The Emmaus story is my New Testament touchstone. My understanding of God and Christ - present realities presently unrecognized, and recognized by - recovered by - simple acts of solidarity - is contained by that story. But Francis calls my attention to a sentence I’ve consistently overlooked. He points to the question the disciples ask once Christ’s identity is clear in retrospect: “were our hearts not burning within us . . . ”

In other words, the way of Love, and the healing power of God, is active without our knowledge or awareness. It originates prior to our comprension and outside our will.

So in a way, recognizing Jesus is an interior moment that is reflected in - but not caused by - what happens in the world. And the heart where this interior moment occurs is “the part of us that is neither appearance or illusion, but is instead authentic, real, entirely “who we are” (5). Moltmann draws out the flames and Francis says, look at this. Be familiar with this. Even if it frightens you.

Because something does burn within me! I do long for a quieter, safer world, for a unity that does not admit unhealable fractures, and for a shared open-mindedness that allows us to live together happily, safe and free. This is a fire in me. I have always dreamed of this Heaven. Others have too.

And yet.

Moltmann would say to me something like, the fire is not enough. You have to do something with it, and what you do may burn you. Fires are not merely light and warmth; they are also destructive. They can easily exceed our control. You might get hurt. It’s definitely going to cost you something.

But Francis - even as his tone is gentler and more pastoral - isn’t exactly comforting. Our will to love - to heal and be healed - can only be guided by Christ, symbolized by the sacred heart of Jesus, whose love was unconditional. This heart - which we share with Jesus and one another, with those who do not want to share it, and even with those who want to kill it dead - is found in the difficult latitudes of relationships we cannot control. Its calls to serve the other can seem dangerous and naive. Yet is only in those relationships in that way that we know who we truly are.

So Eastertide softens as spring deepens. The forsythia and dandelions suture my bafflement in yellow. Nesting cardinals graze daily in the bracken. At dawn, the world is quiet enough I can hear the river beyond the pasture, murmuring as it flows towards the sea.

This beauty touches me in deep places, like poetry and prayer. But beyond that, it awakens our shared sacred heart, and that heart cries out in anguish. So long as one person lives for whom this loveliness and peace are a cruel dream, then I am not truly happy or free. The call isn’t to give up on the heart of Christ but rather to carry it forward - however clumsily, however messily - into the world.

I am here. I am grateful you are here we well. The heart we share with Christ is on fire within me, a conflagration breaking containment. Do you feel it too?

Love,
Sean