Heart Replacement

We have a heart problem.  There’s no doubt about it. Our hearts are “hardened.”  We were created in the image and likeness of a God who poured himself out completely for us.  He gave Himself to us as a gift.  Therefore, we were created to be gift to others and to receive others as the gifts that they are.  Pope St. John Paul II said many times that we have forgotten who we are.  We have forgotten that we are sons or daughters of God, created in His image and likeness to be gift.  We have turned inward on ourselves and live for ourselves instead of living for others.  This living for ourselves hardens our hearts and makes us forget who we are. 

Pope Francis said in his October 2024 Encyclical On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ “…the heart makes all authentic bonding possible, since a relationship not shaped by the heart is incapable of overcoming the fragmentation caused by individualism. …A society dominated by narcissism and self-centeredness will increasingly become ’heartless’” (Para 17). God promises us a new heart. “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ez 36:26).

Eucharistic Miracles

In the lead up to the National Eucharistic Congress this year, I was reflecting on our hardened hearts and pondering the gift of the Eucharist. I ran across something that had me praying and pondering for quite a while.  Scientists have studied the Eucharistic miracles.  An Italian Cardiologist, Dr. Franco Serafini, traveled the world to document Eucharistic miracles and zeroed in on five particular events in Buenos Aires, Tixtla, Mexico, Legnica and Sokolka, Poland and Lanciano, Italy.

He Gives Us His Own Heart!

The tissue of the Eucharistic miracles is heart tissue.  Let that sink in. To remedy our heart problem, Jesus doesn’t merely console us or give us sound advice, although he does do those things. He gives us HIS OWN HEART! I was overwhelmed when I realized this fulfillment of the promise that Jesus made in Ezekiel. “I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ez 36:26). In the Mass, the priest tells us to lift up our hearts and we respond, “We lift them up to the Lord.” 

We go to Mass with our hardened hearts, we “lift them up to the Lord” and then, in a total miraculous, generous gift of Himself, he gives us HIS heart.  The article goes on to explain one more aspect of the research. Not only was the blood real blood, it was living.  The article says that the blood had “the presence of the proteins with an electrophoretic ratio that is similar to that of fresh blood.”  In the Eucharist, Jesus gives us his living heart.

The Heart is a Battlefield

In his scriptural reflections on the human person, the Theology of the Body, Pope St. John Paul II says, “The ‘heart’ has become a battlefield between love and concupiscence. The more concupiscence dominates the heart the less the heart experiences the spousal meaning of the body, and the less sensitive it becomes to the gift of the person that expresses precisely this meaning in the reciprocal relations of man and woman” (TOB 32:3). In other words, every single day we fight a battle within our hearts.  A battle between choosing to love, remembering who we are, or to sin, forgetting who we are.

When we choose to close off our hearts to others, to live for ourselves, our hearts become hardened. We all do this sometimes.  Then we have another choice to make, do we continue to choose to live for ourselves or do we choose to live as God calls us to live — as gift for others? How can we choose to live as God calls us to live when we are in the depths of sin?

Winning the Battle

There is a solution, there is hope! We can win the battle between love and concupiscence that rages in our hearts by committing ourselves to frequent prayer and reception of the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist.  Pope St. John Paul II says that prayer, Eucharist and Penance are the “infallible and indispensable” means to “form the Christian spirituality of conjugal and familial life.” We must “draw grace and love from the ever-living fountain of the Eucharist” and “overcome…faults and sins in the sacrament of Penance” (TOB 126:5).

We can go to these sacraments and lift up our hearts to the Lord, giving him our hearts. Then, open and receive our Lord’s mercy in the sacrament of Penance and His own living heart in the Eucharist giving us new life!  Run to confession and Mass, lift up your heart, and receive His! What a GIFT!

Written by,
Kathleen Cory,
Outreach & Implementation (South) for Ruah Woods Institute
kcory@ruahwoods.org