A heart full of love
St John the Baptist preached in the wilderness, in the region of the river
Jordan, a baptism of repentance. The multitudes regarded him as a prophet. In their
expectation of the coming of the Messiah, they wondered if he might be the one. He
made it very clear that he was not. He was the ‘Voice’, foretold by the prophet Isaiah,
crying in the wilderness to prepare the way for the Lord. John knew his vocation and
that his ministry was not his own but completely the work of God acting through him.
He draws the distinction between the baptism he administers with water and that of
the one to come after him. The Christ will baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
John leads the way to a conversion of heart as a preparation to receive and to
recognize the Anointed One to come after him. He stands at the threshold of the old to
usher in the new and make the way for a time of a more penetrating Divine Action.
Water cleanses the body, but the Holy Spirit purifies the soul with fire – the
Fire of Divine Love. During the Season of Advent, we too are in a state of
preparation. Today, Gaudete Sunday, we rejoice as we look forward to the coming of
the Christ Child in our midst, into our souls. Pope Francis has written in his recent
encyclical Dilexit Nos, that our world has grown heartless. He calls for a renewal of
our lives through a true devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Pope St John Paul II
wrote that the Sacred Heart of Jesus is ‘the Holy Spirit’s masterpiece’. And we can
add that an essential part of this masterpiece is the Immaculate Heart of Mary, from
whom the Word of God took on human flesh. As we have from the prophet Ezekiel, a
new era will come when Our Lord will remove our heart of stone and give us a heart
of flesh. A new spirit He will put within us. He will cleanse us with the burning fire of
His Love through the Holy Spirit. We now live in this era. But hearts of stone can
obscure the vision.
Pope Francis wrote of the great mystics who have experienced a deep union
with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The moment in Our Lord’s life when he showed us the
infinite love His Heart has for the world was on the Cross. Out of His pierced side
flowed the Blood and Water, which flow from the fountain of his Divine Mercy in the
Sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist. Mystics have drawn upon and given
us a great inspiration in their understanding of dwelling in the Heart of Jesus through
His pierced side. But Pope Francis has warned that a private devotion that does not
lead us outwards as missionaries is not a true devotion to the Sacred Heart.
I wish to dwell a little on one of the mystics the Pope mentions but does not
expand upon. The great inspiration that St Teresa of Calcutta had was when she heard
the words of Jesus from the Cross: ‘I Thirst’. She understood these words to mean
something much deeper than simply a thirst for water. His thirst is for souls. In the
first instance she recognized the thirst Jesus had for the ‘poorest of the ‘poor’ on the
streets of Calcutta. Her vocation then was to seek to quench the thirst of Jesus by
bringing these souls to Him. But the most extraordinary aspect of the spiritual
experience of Mother Teresa was the darkness her soul suffered for a period of over
40 years. No one knew of this except her spiritual directors. Normally such a dark
night of the soul entails a purification. But in her case, according to one of her
directors at the time of the beginning of this experience for her, she was already in a
state of a deep union with God, close to ecstasy. The darkness was a long and intense
suffering for her, unheard of before in the lives of the saints apart from St Paul of the
Cross. Her suffering was not so much a purification but an intense share in the
suffering of Christ and His thirst for souls. Therefore, the Lord’s thirst was to be her
light, that which would guide her in the service of the poorest of the poor. The
darkness was a mysterious link that united her to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and his
burning love for souls. It gave her an intense and continual longing for God. In time,
she recognized that Jesus’ thirst for souls was not just for those in Calcutta. Her
mission was to the whole world and to those suffering in many ways. She would say
that the greatest suffering is not that of economic poverty, but of loneliness.
Although we do not have such an encounter with God as she had, we can learn
from her life. Mother Teresa, like St John the Baptist, was always at pains to explain
that the extraordinary work in her life was not her own. The growth of the
Missionaries of Charity and all their work was God’s work alone and not hers. There
was no room for pride in her heart. When people tried to ascribe greatness to her, she
always pointed them to Jesus. She was merely a pencil in His Hand by which he
wrote His letters of Love for the world. Secondly, despite the long interior trial of
darkness, she placed her complete trust in God. In time, as she wrote, she came to
love the darkness in her soul. It was this darkness that intensified her trust in God. He
can work miracles through a heart completely open to His Love, a heart of flesh, not
of stone. Thirdly, as she would often say to her sisters, do your work with a smile. She
was a woman with a heart always open to God, truly human, truly tender. One day in
Calcutta, a man offered her a gift of some very expensive cigarettes. What did she do?
Sorry, we don’t smoke. Smoking is bad for your health. Not at all. Instead, she
received the gift with gratitude and put the cigarettes in her bag. Later that same day
she and her sisters found a man close to death lying in the gutter, eaten half alive by
maggots. They helped him back to the house, nursed him, cleaned him with their
characteristic tender love and smiles. The man asked her: ‘Mother, could I have … a
cigarette?’ Such is the enormity and simplicity of the God who is absolutely in love
with every soul bowing to a simple wish to a dying man through the human heart who
loves. God extends His Providence to all thigs and is in all things.
Finally, Mother had an intense love for Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. She would
refer to any new house she opened as a new ‘tabernacle’. In the last year of her life, in
a hospital in Calcutta, close to death, although she did not die then, the Hindu doctor
said to the priest: ‘Father, go home and bring that box to Mother’. What box? A shoe
box, he thought? No, the doctor said, ‘that box, that temple they bring and put in her
room and Mother looks at it all the time. If you bring it and put it in the room Mother
will become so quiet’. The Hindu doctor was an unknowing witness to the power of
the Eucharist over her. She drank deep within from the Blood of Christ poured out for
the salvation of our souls. She wanted to love Jesus as He had never been loved
before, apart from, of course, Our Lady. Jesus granted her desire, through her
suffering for the 40 long years of darkness. Her life exemplifies the intimate bond
between love and suffering. What was the greatest aspect of her love for Jesus that
delighted Him most? Her complete trust in Him. In the dark areas of our soul,
whatever suffering we may undergo, she is now a great advocate for us, our Saint of
Darkness.
Dom Brian Gerard Kelly, OSB