Homily originally presented September 2, 2018

If someone with a weapon was coming at you with the intention of killing you ...

and you had a gun ...where would you aim to hit the attacker?

Would you try to shoot him in the foot or the leg?

Would you try to shoot him in the hand or the arm?

No, if you’re like me, you’d probably try to shoot him … in the heart.

Why would that be where you aim?

Shooting him in the hand may make him drop his weapon, but he’s still coming! And shooting him in the leg may slow him down, but he’s still coming!

But shooting him in the heart ... would stop him!

When the heart stops, life stops!     That’s because the heart is essential for life.

And because this is true, because the heart is so essential to life, we often refer to it

when we wish to express our deepest and most tender feelings to others.

When we’re really crazy about someone, we say, “I love you with all my heart.”

When we’re especially grateful, we say, “I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

Again and again we refer to the “heart” as the very essence of a person.

• Girls refer to their boyfriends as “heartthrobs” and
• Guys refer to their girlfriends as “sweethearts”.

So it’s no surprise that Our Lord would refer to the heart ...

as the place where goodness or evil emanates from in a person.

In our Gospel today, Jesus says, “From within people, from their hearts, come ...

evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy blasphemy, arrogance (and) folly.

What a comprehensive list of evil! We see these sins everywhere in our world. Where do they come from? From society, from the culture, from something you eat?

No, Jesus says, “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person …

      all of these evils come from within and they defile.”

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “He’s rotten to the core.”

That comes from the understanding that evil comes from within ... from the very core of a person.                 It comes from ... the heart.

You see, the presence of evil can be all around you and you don’t have to be evil. Jesus and all the Saints are witnesses of this. They lived in the same world we do where sin abounds, and they chose not to sin.  Evil is not in the air or in the food or in the customs of the people. Evil originates in the heart of a person whenever someone freely chooses to turn away from following God’s law.

God created us to be good. He made us in His image and likeness and that was very good! But sin changed all that. Sin darkened our likeness with concupiscence which is an attraction to the allure of evil and our hearts became capable of many evils.

But through it all, God has never abandoned us. He never ceases to call us back to follow His law so that our hearts can be the source of goodness once again.

Some 500 years before Jesus, God sent the Prophet Jeremiah to speak to the Chosen People and he announced that one day God would write His law on their hearts so that they would really know how to be pleasing to God.

A little later, the Prophet Ezekiel came on the scene and he was even more emphatic. He proclaimed that God would take away our stony hearts and give us fleshy hearts ... so that we would really know how to walk in the ways of God.

Well, God most assuredly kept His word. He did both of these things for all of us!

In the great Sacrament of Baptism that we’ve received ...

 God took away our heart that was stained by the Original Sin of Adam ...

and He replaced it with a heart free of all sin!

And then He went even further by writing His Law upon our hearts! You see, in Baptism, God infuses our hearts with the 3 Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope and Love.   And our conscience lets us know how well we use those gifts.

So you see, God kept His word ... He’s given us new hearts ...

and He’s written His law upon them!

It’s our job to keep our hearts clean and pure of the things that offend God.

In our Second Reading, St. James tells us, “Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you and is able to save your souls.” In other words, we must actively welcome God’s word to let it take root in our heart.

Should our hearts ever become tainted by sin, we need to run to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where God’s mercy will wash over us and make our hearts pure once again and renew us in His law of Love.

So you see, the heart is more than just the essence of our biological life, it is also the essence of our spiritual life. We don’t know exactly where our soul is, so we commonly associate it with our heart.

Is there any question in your mind about which one is more important?

Last week, in our Gospel from the 6^th Chapter of John, Jesus said,

“It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail.”

And indeed it is! Our flesh is mortal; it will one day die and decay.

But, our spirit is immortal; it will continue to live on forever.

It will be either with God or apart from God for all eternity.

And because it’s the spirit that lives on, that’s the one that’s the most important!

It’s the condition of the human heart that determines our level of intimacy with God. In today’s Gospel, Jesus quotes the Prophet Isaiah saying

“This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression that someone is giving us “lip service”.

It means that they are being less than authentic. They are actually being insincere. God’s desire is that we love Him and love one another ...

genuinely and authentically and sincerely … with all our hearts.

For example, Jesus spoke often of how we are to forgive those who offend us and He clearly said, “You will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven ...

unless you forgive one another … from your heart.”

To do this, we need to cling to God’s word and we would do well to concentrate on the gesture that we make right before we hear His word in the Gospel

That’s when we make the sign of the Cross on our forehead, our lips and our hearts. And whisper our request, “O Lord, be in my mind, on my lips and in my heart!”

And that marks the very direction that we need to move. We need to move from the head to the heart! That’s where God wants His word to reside … in our hearts!

So, as we said in the opening scenario, when your life is at stake, and you have to take aim, always aim for the heart … your heart. That’s where you need to direct your efforts and attention so that you nourish the law of God written on your heart and keep it free from every type of evil that can only defile.

There are great Prayers to help us here. For example, recall the Prayer before the Crucifix, where we pray, for God to “fix deep in my heart, lively sentiments of faith hope and charity, true contrition for my sins and a firm purpose of amendment.” 

So too in the Act of Contrition: O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended

Let’s reflect on the spiritual condition of our hearts and take action to cure ourselves of any “heart” disease: of any thoughts, actions or feelings that are not of God. With His grace we’ll be able to transform ourselves so that ...

we love God and our neighbor with all our hearts.

Pray for the grace to have:

A heart full of good, not evil … A heart full of virtue, not vice

A heart full of kindness, not harshness … A heart full of love, not hate

In short, pray daily:  “Dear Lord Jesus, make my heart … like unto Thine!”

• Lonely hearts, Broken hearts (The Wizard of Oz), Wounded hearts
• Heart speaks to heart (St. John Henry Newman)
• I give you my heart (Valentines Day)
• You have my heartfelt sympathy
• I will give you shepherds after my own heart.
• Heart of stone, heart of glass
• Queen of Hearts Dance at John Carroll
• Abortion stops a beating heart
• The Sacred
• The Immaculate Heart
• This is the heart of the problem or the heart of the matter
• The compassionate love of God is poured out to us through the Pierced Heart of Jesus.

Let’s allow God to form our hearts by His commands.

1. Living in conformity with God’s will frees us from all concern about good & evil.
2. Through the observance of God’s commandments, we shall experience the fullness of life.

• In our First Reading, Moses said, “For what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God, is to us!”

Jesus calls us into intimacy with him by emphasizing that in His humanity, He too had a heart.

• In the late 1600’s, Jesus appeared in a vision to Margaret Mary Alocoque and told her He desired people to venerate His Sacred Heart.
• For some 400 years now we have maintained our devotion to the image of Jesus known as the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
• In the mid 1900’s, Jesus appeared in a vision to Faustina Kolwalska and told her he desired people to venerate His Divine Mercy.
• For some 60 years now we have maintained our devotion to the image of Jesus known as the Divine Mercy, with two rays streaming from His heart.

Today, Doctors can literally replace a person’s heart in surgery.

• This often gives the person several extra years of life, and one day he will die.

But, God can spiritually replace a person’s heart in Baptism and in Confession.

• This can give the person life without end, for the soul is eternal like God.

We pray for goodness to become so natural that we don’t even have to think about it.

• Like the beating of our hearts, that goes on and on without attention.

Let’s call upon the Lord to help us maintain our hearts in His image and likeness by asking Him each and every day, “Dear Lord, make my heart like unto thine”.