Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Proverbs 4:23

A few months back I read a book by Protestant Pastor, Blake Healy called Profound Good. This Pastor says he can see into the spiritual realm. I don’t doubt that God may allow that, especially in these times. I found him to be completely genuine. I am grateful for the Catholic Church that guides us in discernment of these types of things. I don’t know this Pastor but I found his heart in his writing seems to genuinely love Jesus and on that we have common ground.

I found though, that the book, which is about the profound goodness of God, left me a little sad from the perspective that this Pastor, who has a genuine love for God, lacks the context of the Sacraments to help him understand what He sees. The worship consists mostly of concert like performance. I can see a danger for congregants of faith simply because of good feeling, though I don’t doubt the faith of the believers. I don’t say that to judge, just as an observation that it lacks something. And that something is of course, the Eucharist.

It makes me pray for unity, the kind that comes from heaven.

In one section of the book Blake describes what he sees happening to people in their worship. He sees Jesus coming up to individual people. In one section he describes Jesus looking into a man’s chest. He says;

I noticed that his heart was in a cage. It was small and metal, a little like a bird cage. It was dented, bent and twisted as if a wild animal had been desperately trying to get into it.

With absolute precision and gentleness Jesus reached forward, opened the broken cage, and removed it from the man’s chest without the sides touching his heart at all. He handed the cage to an angel standing just behind Him and then He leaned forward and took the man’s heart in His hands. He lifted the heart to His mouth and blew on it. Like coal catching oxygen from the wind, the man’s heart heated and began to glow.

Then Jesus did something that surprised me. He reached behind his back and pulled out a golden cage. It was similar in size and shape to the one He had removed, except that it was in perfect condition and much more ornate than the first one had ever been. He places the man’s heart in the golden cage and returned it to his chest. (Profound Good, page 112)

I sat there pondering this description and I realized that Christ had removed a prisoner’s cage and replaced it with a tabernacle. A tabernacle in the Catholic Church is where the Eucharist is kept. It protects what is sacred from abuse.

The heart of the human person can be caged in sin. Jesus took on all of our sin. In the 13th hour of the Passion by Louisa Piccareta, part of the Passion is described by her like this;

…I see that they have put you in prison….I see you with your hands tied behind You to a colum, with your feet immobilized and bound. I see your most holy Face beaten, swollen, and bloodied from the barbaric blows You have received…Your most holy eyes are livid, blackened; your gaze tired and extinguished from the sleepless night; your hair in disorder; your Most Holy Person is totally ravaged, and add to that , because You are bound, You cannot rely on Your own abilities to help or clean Yourself. And I, O my Jesus, crying and embracing your feet, exclaim: ‘O! How they have left You! O Jesus! (13th hour from 5-6am)

Jesus who has the heart that so loves men;

sat in the prison of our sins with his own unguarded heart so that he could live in our hearts and guard them from this prison of sin, if only we let Him light His fire there. How do we become a living tabernacle? How to we keep this heart of ours that he wants to make holy from hardness and defilement?

We repent and confess. I suspect that whatever Blake witnessed there, that person, in their own understanding, was confessing and giving their sin to God. The fire of God can then descend, and the heart starts to become holy. Stone turns to flesh. Whether it stays that way is up to each individual and his or her response to God once leaving the worship.

For Catholics, we are so blessed because we can fill ourselves with the Holy Eucharist, which is God Himself, and the fire only grows. When this fire grows, despite the suffering around us and the suffering we go through, we start to be elevated to a higher love, to true charity.

As I sat in Mass with this realization today, I saw that all the suffering that is going on actually gives us the opportunity to love more; to love harder than we ever have, and I began to thank God for the sufferings, both big and small. As I sat there pondering this in Mass, a leaf blower went on full volume outside. Now any of you who know me know how easily I can get annoyed by loud noises when I am trying to pray. But in this moment this morning, I thanked God for the opportunity to focus harder on the sacrifice of the Mass, to love Him more, when I could be easily distracted. I started to see how my suffering made me to come to Him more and more and how this fire burned inside brighter and brighter. And I was thankful. It’s actually a little bit hard to explain, but it was an acknowledgement that in all the suffering, I had come to love more. What a grace for today. I pray it stays.

 I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. Colossians 1:24

What I have learned through the suffering is that though the devil may assault your mind, and though your body may grow fatigued and tired, the Love of God does not grow tired, ever.

 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.  For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.  When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.  For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.  And now faith, hope, and -love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:8-13

The person who exemplifies a living tabernacle is the Blessed Virgin Mary. She had God in her heart and in her womb. She is a glowing Golden Soul. She became so Christ-like in love that she was crowned Queen of Heaven and Earth assumed body and soul into heaven where her heart is an unguarded heart like her Sons, and she advocates for us. She is a conduit of the Lord’s grace to His people down below.

Salve, Regina, Mater misericordiae,
vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.
ad te clamamus
exsules filii Evae,
ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes
in hac lacrimarum valle.

Eia, ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos
misericordes oculos ad nos converte;
et Iesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui,
nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.
O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria.

One day her Immaculate heart will triumph and we will be elevated to the glory God has in store for us. Until then, we pray to be a living tabernacle.

If you would like to purchase the Family Healing prayer book, The Queen’s Triumph, I co-authored with Ashley Blackburn, please click this link.