“Making the decision to have a child — it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
Over the years I’ve heard so many parents share this quote from Elizabeth Stone, because it speaks to the (literal) heart of raising a child: a calling that involves vulnerability, anxiety, lack of control, and above all, overwhelming love.
But what about the original One who let his (literal) heart be broken open and given to us?
In this month dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, I’m always struck by the vivid imagery of this title and devotion. Christ is shown holding his own heart, pointing to a human heart pierced with thorns, held in his wounded hands, giving his whole self to us in the most visceral way.
What is the holy beat of the Sacred Heart if not the same joyful, painful throb that parents feel the moment a child is placed in their arms, knowing they will forever have their whole heart walking around outside their body?
Every time I speak at a church or conference, parents and grandparents come up afterward and want to tell me their most painful stories. Grief, loss, illness, estrangement, addiction, abuse — I am brought to my knees by what the human heart can hold.
Yet I’m equally amazed by how the heart can heal, mend, stretch, yearn and hope. I have witnessed the resilience and radical love of parents who come to understand that while they cannot control or change their children, they can always come to God with every hope that Love will carry their children through whatever life brings.
My own body bears physical scars and emotional wounds. The deepest pains I have carried are from parenting: The babies I have buried, the wounds my children suffered that I was powerless to stop, and the dreams I had to let die to embrace the real life before me. But the Sacred Heart reminds me that nothing — not even the bruised or broken parts of our lives — needs to be hidden from God, especially not from Jesus who never shielded his own flesh from wounds but laid down his whole life out of love.
The 17th-century mystic St. Margaret Mary Alcoque wrote of her intense visions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus: “The divine heart … is an abyss of joy into which all of us can immerse our sorrows … an abyss of love to meet our every need.” She spoke of God’s love and mercy in words that resonate with the unconditional, sacrificial love of anyone who has ever given their life to a child: “The Sacred Heart is an inexhaustible fountain, and its sole desire is to pour itself out into the hearts of the humble so as to free them and prepare them to lead lives according to his good pleasure.”
Can we step back to let this sacred iconography startle us anew? A shining, flaming heart encircled by thorns and topped by a cross. An organ outside the body, outstretched and offered to us. What is Christ saying to us through this image if not the truth that love is costly and painful — yet also the ultimate offering of hope? You cannot see a bleeding heart and turn away unchanged.
We let our hearts walk around outside our bodies, and so does God, the ultimate loving parent.
What a gift to have not just a single solemnity but a whole month — at the sweet start of summer — to celebrate the greatest gift of the Sacred Heart. A heart that cannot contain all the compassion and mercy it offers, spilling over in abundance. A heart that beats for all of us, God’s beloved children walking out into the world, always part of the body of Christ.
