Cardinal Blase J. Cupich

The most decisive question: Do I have a heart?

October 30, 2024

Pope Francis has written a singularly important encyclical on the human and divine love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, “Dilexit Nos” (“He loved us”). He offers a path to respond to God’s invitation in our often loveless world to bring love forward. As an introduction to the encyclical, I want to draw attention to his reflections on the human heart, what it means and what it can do.

As I read the Holy Father’s fourth encyclical, I came away with two immediate thoughts. First, he is calling us to live authentically by being in touch with the deep longings in our hearts.

He reminds us that the human heart is where we are most ourselves. It is where we hold the secrets about ourselves and the hopes and dreams about what our lives can be. “It is the part of us that is neither appearance or illusion, but is instead authentic, real, entirely “‘who we are.’”

Therefore, it is important to be in touch with our personal uniqueness, and to appreciate the wonder that God has created us in an unrepeatable way, called to live our lives originally, with a sense of mystery and expectation.

The second insight is connected to the first. When our hearts are stirred and we begin to understand more fully who we are, we become more open to others. The Holy Father gives his own personal testimony in this regard when he writes: “I am my heart, for my heart is what sets me apart, shapes my spiritual identity and puts me in communion with other people.”

Keeping in mind this connection between embracing our uniqueness and our willingness to give ourselves to others has great relevance for today. Quoting the Second Vatican Council, Pope Francis observes that “the imbalances affecting the world today are in fact a symptom of a deeper imbalance rooted in the human heart” (“Gaudium et Spes,” 10).

Indeed, everywhere we turn today, the pope writes, we witness a society increasingly becoming heartless as it is dominated by narcissism and self-centeredness.

The pope is particularly concerned about how we all are affected by the easy acceptance of war as the solution to our problems. “When we witness the outbreak of new wars, with the complicity, tolerance or indifference of other countries ... we may be tempted to conclude that our world is losing its heart.”

If we are to live authentic lives and stay in touch with our hearts, we must resist any impulse to remain indifferent to the sufferings of others and to tolerate the inhumanity that war brings. The Holy Father wants to jar the world out of its disinterest and apathy as wars plague the human family, leaving our hearts cold to the sufferings of others, when he writes: “We need only to see and listen to the elderly women — from both sides — who are at the mercy of these devastating conflicts. It is heart-breaking to see them mourning for their murdered grandchildren, or longing to die themselves after losing the homes where they spent their entire lives. Those women, who were often pillars of strength and resilience amid life’s difficulties and hardships, now, at the end of their days, are experiencing, in place of a well-earned rest, only anguish, fear and outrage. Casting the blame on others does not resolve these shameful and tragic situations. To see these elderly women weep, and not feel that this is something intolerable, is a sign of a world that has grown heartless.”

And yet, in order to resist the impulse to remain indifferent, “it is not enough to know the Gospel or to carry out mechanically its demands. We need the help of God’s love.” By loving as God loves, we find our true selves and open ourselves to others.

It is by allowing our lives to be shaped by God’s love that we find the liberty to say yes to the question the Holy Father asks each of us to answer: “In loving, we sense that we come to know the purpose and goal of our existence in this world. Everything comes together in a state of coherence and harmony. It follows that, in contemplating the meaning of our lives, perhaps the most decisive question we can ask is, ‘Do I have a heart?’”

That is the simple question we all must answer as we struggle to live authentic lives that are in touch with our hearts and the hearts of others.

I invite you to read and study this beautifully written encyclical of the Holy Father, which you can find at vatican.va.

Topics:

  • encyclical

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