Change of Heart
On Palm Sunday, it always bothered me how quickly the crowd went from one day welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem, ushering him in with palm branches while chanting “Hosanna,” then mere days later, the crowd, shouting “Crucify him!” How could the crowd have such a dramatic change of heart so fast, so soon?
Well, it has to do with the First Reading on the first day of Lent, on Ash Wednesday, in which God invites us to “return to Me with all of your heart.”1 You see, our hearts can be divided sometimes. One day we can want what is good for us and another day we desire what is pleasurable, thinking that it is good. Sometimes we think we are capable of making great sacrifices like the virtuous saints we read about, then we miss the opportunity to show the smallest sign of patience by getting angry or impatient with someone we love. Our hearts are divided because there are many things we love; many things occupy places in our heart.
And so the God who is Love Itself had to show us how to give our heart completely. He became Man to have a beating heart to show us. He could’ve insisted that we share in the penalty but He chose to pay our entire debt alone so that we never doubt He understands…the fear and isolation that would prompt a lonely heart to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Although, on the Cross, His body cried, “I thirst,” when they offered Jesus a drink, He did not take it, to show us this difference: the body may hunger, but the soul thirsts…with a deeper longing. That although our body hungers for physical pleasure, our body can sacrifice what it desires for a greater good, that for which the soul thirsts. During his crucifixion, Our Blessed Lord, in his body did hunger for relief from his physical anguish, but instead he said, “I thirst” because he desired something more than bodily comfort—He thirsts for the souls and the hearts of man; He thirsts to satisfy the deepest longing, our heart’s desire.
And that is why He chose this way to die…the only way a heart divided and split can truly understand…is to see a pierced heart, itself split by the lance of a soldier to reveal its contents, His Most Precious Blood. He allowed the chalice of His Body to be drained of His Precious Blood to show us his Love. No greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for another.2 Blood separated from the body is a sign of death, but it is also a sign of love. That is why at the Mass, the priest consecrates the bread and wine not together but separately. The consecration of the bread and wine separately coincides with the separation of the body and blood at Our Lord’s Passion and Death on Calvary, renewed at the altar. Jesus could have given us his Body and Blood as a sacrifice at any time during his holy life, but he chose to give it at the holiest moment of his life, which was his death (on the Cross), when his Blood was separated from his Body, because that was a sure sign of His Love.
We are in the last days of Lent, before the Great Triduum, the holiest three days of the year. But let not your hearts be troubled if you’ve broken a Lenten sacrifice here or there. It’s still not too late; our sacrifices have not been for naught. Love is a perpetual dialogue, and during Lent, this takes the form of a dialogue between a penitent and his merciful God in response to the invitation to return to Me with all of your heart. For we can respond by praying:
But what if I have a prideful heart, would you in time make it more humble?
Or what Scripture calls a “stony heart,” hardened by sin and the times I’ve stumbled.
An unforgiving, embittered heart, expecting justice from a world sometimes hostile
Will you judge me with a compassionate heart, so I would be to them as merciful?
Impurity I allowed enter the thoughts of my heart, create then in me a clean heart, O Lord.
Not unlike your Mother’s at the foot of the Cross, what if I showed you a wounded heart of sorrow?
Will you reveal your pierced, crucified heart, from which the grace of healing overflow.
So that I would never doubt you understand, You became Man, a beating heart for me to see
And to pull mankind from the heart of darkness, all the more reason to adore
Your Most Sacred Heart, Lord Jesus.
1 Joel 2:12.
2 John 15:13.
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