They all three of them looked down and decided, “in their eternity,” that the second of them should become human (Week 2, Day 1. The Spiritual Exercises. Trans. Ganss, S.J.). Mother and child wail in the push of new creation. We are born all heart and nerve endings. We develop instinct. Instinct gives way to thought. Thought helps us build and destroy. We learn to take as our own and give to receive. We grow, and become shrewd. We learn to barter, for goods, with emotions, sans compassion. We create connections like generals, relying on loyalty in lieu of true companionship, settling for a mercenary’s oath where a covenant was once the only thing that would suffice. Enter the heart of Christ, the incarnation, and we begin to work backwards. Heart inhabits thought, as thought inhabits instinct. We return to our nature. Only, something has changed. We are no longer ignorant of who we are as people. We are no longer driven through our desire, nor do we fear it. We are changed by the awareness of our heart, and how the happiness of the heart might shape our world by allowing us to choose our words and tend to our relationships with care. We are aware of how the joy of existence is the fire that burns warmer and brighter than our fluorescent intellect might let us see. Christ changes our world. I came back to the faith through the intellect, but I was pulled back to Christ by the heart. I heard the Creed and I knew that I could believe in God, it was not until I felt the love of Her, the one who bore Him, that I knew I could live my life in God. I saw God in the cryptic mystery of John’s wordplay in chapter 1, but it was in the voice of the Baptist that I felt my desire to know Christ. I heard the arguments of Peter and recognized his words were good, but it was praying with love in his letter to the Corinthians that changed my life. I could see the mastery of the “GodMan” healing his way through Galilee, but not until the temptation in the desert did I know the pain of the incarnation and catch the first glimmer of what was at stake. Every day I have to learn to love again. My mind is with me always, always working. My heart chooses the better part. My mind expresses desire for Him in tiny little words. It is my heart, though, that pushes at my chest with the glory of each joyful connection and the sadness of angry deeds. My mind lets my heart speak so that I might be conscious of how I can better act in love. My words become the deeds that I am not yet strong enough to fulfill. It is the glorious paradox. Even while I am growing in Body of Christ, the Incarnation is growing in me. I am being called toward the new creation. As I walk towards death, I find I am nearer the beginning, and my life is made new. “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God” (Jn 1, 1). Photo: “The Heart Knows Better“by johnivara from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

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