Transformation -- Part 3

To you, O my heart, He has said, "Seek My Face."

Your Face, Lord, I will seek (Ps. 27:8)

 

Test me, O Lord, and try me,

examine my heart and my mind;

for your love is ever before me,

and I walk continually in Your truth (Ps. 26:2-3).

 

This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel...declares the Lord.

"I will put my law in their minds

and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God,

and they will be my people.

No longer will a man teach his neighbor,

or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,'

because they will all know me,

from the least to the greatest" (Jer. 31:33-34)

 

I have been writing for the past several days about the sign of the cross Catholics make on their foreheads, on their lips, and on their breasts at the reading of the Gospel, accompanied by the prayer, "May the word of God remain in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, now and forever."

 

The entire goal of the Christian life, the purpose for which Jesus died on the cross, is that we might know God, His Father, the way He knows the Father of heaven and earth.  And "knowing" in the Biblical sense means intimacy with, understanding, communion with -- no distance between -- of one spirit.  St. Seraphim tells us that no matter what we do -- prayer, rosary, liturgy, fasting, reading, etc.---the one aim of any and all practice in the spiritual life is acquisition of the Holy Spirit.  This very tiny book is available on Amazon Kindle for 99 cents or free, if I remember rightly, and it is one that can be read in an hour or so.  In my opinion, every Catholic, every Christian, should read St. Steraphim's On Acquisition of the Holy Spirit at least once a year if not more often, in order to remind us of what we are all about in following the Christ of God.

 

If any one of us does not recognize the evil lurking deep within the recesses of our own hearts, we are still blind, deaf, and dumb.  Jesus said that when the Spirit of Truth comes, He will convict the world of sin because they do not believe in Him (Jn. 16:9).  Those who read this passage "in the flesh" will bristle at it because they do not understand it at all.

 

To "believe" in Jesus means to get into the wheelbarrow* and to allow Him to take us across the falls.  (*In a classic cartoon, a man is standing beside Niagra Falls, over which is stretched a tightrope.  Beside him stands Jesus with a wheelbarrow.  "Do you believe I can take this wheelbarrow across that tightrope?" asks Jesus.  "Yes, Lord, I believe you can do that," replies the man; "You can do all things."  "Then," says Jesus, "Get in." )

 

The only way our miserable, sin-baptized hearts, the core of our being, can be transformed into new hearts is for us to "get in the wheelbarrow" and allow Jesus to take us across the chasm from where we are now to where He wants us to be.  "Is not my word like a hammer," asks the Lord, "that breaks a rock into pieces?"  What He wants to "break into pieces" is our stony heart:  I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.  Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.  They will be my people and I will be their God (Ez. 11:19).  The ONLY One Who can accomplish this miracle of transformation in us is Jesus Christ.  That is why, if we refuse to allow Him to transform our hearts of stone, we remain in our sin. 

 

We must allow the Word of God to transform us from earthly creatures to men and women of heaven.  Otherwise, we won't "fit" into the kingdom of God.  And since Jesus IS the living Word of God, only He can speak to us the word that will transform us at any given moment of our lives.  As someone once wrote, "It's a living, loving thing."  Let us, then, sign ourselves with the cross of Jesus Christ on our heads, on our lips, and on our breasts, knowing that only He can take us across the chasm from sin to the holiness that God requires.