Meditations on Heart by Henri Nouwen
A Matter of the Heart
-To let your mind descend into your heart and there stand before God- Contemplative Spirituality
- God is as big as your heart
- Your heart is big enough to contain the whole world
Questioning the deepest part of a person
- What do I fear?
- What do I love?
- What gives me joy?
- What brings me peace?
- Heart's affections were deeper than conscious feelings, have objects and relations that shape beliefs and practices, and the heart knows, trusts, values, and seeks truth
- The Latin word credo, which translates today as "I believe" originally meant, I give my heart to."
- What you give your heart to reveals more of who you are than what you profess to believe and practice
God Looks Upon the Heart
- Spirituality was the most important and it was a matter of the heart
- The sacrifice or offering God desires is an open, clean, broken, and contrite heart (Ps 51:17)
- Spiritual formation is the spiritual awakening, purification, growth, and development of a divine heart in the body of a human being lived out in community and service in the world
- The heart is the spiritual organ of the core self: the innerspring of personal life and motivation; the deep source of all desire, thoughts, and choices; the center and seat of the emotions, intellect and will
- There are three biblical aspects of the human heart: emotional (feelings, moods, and passions), intellectual (intellectual source of thought and reflection), and volitional (conscience)
- He focused more on the inner heart- the core self or human spirit that belongs only to God
- What he means by heart is the center of our being where God comes to dwell with us and brings us the gifts of faith, hope and love
- The heart allows us to enter into a relationship and experience that we are sons and daughters of God.
- In the hidden place of the heart, known intimately by God, a divine penetration and human response occur
- Within the heart, human beings meet God's Word directly and decisively, which results in conversion and transformation
- Both biblically and theologically, then, the heart is the center for feeling, thinking, and deciding. It represents the total human being at the core. That is why the greatest commandment is to love God with all one's heart...., that is, with one's whole self
The Divine Heart
- Henri says "I am called to enter into the sanctuary of my own being where God has chosen to dwell
- In kneeling before God, embracing the divine heart, and listening to the depth of one's own being, one begins to see and hear things from a divine source
- The call to speak from eternity into time, which is the fruit of prayerfulness more than the result of any particular form of prayer
- The prayerfulness of the heart is deeper and ultimately more important than the particular words that are prayed
- An untrained person with a simple and humble heart may pray more effectively from the heart than one who knows to use the appropriate theological language and proper forms of prayer
- 1st prayer: Your heart is open to receive anyone with total, unrestricted love
- 2nd prayer: Identification of His own broken heart with divine woundedness and suffering
- 3rd prayer: Recognize that the wounded heart of God's love is one with his own heart and with the broken heart of the world
- Merton referred heart as the center of our nothingness where, in apparent despair, one meets God and is found completely in His mercy
- Merton draws on a French term that he declares he cannot translate: le point vierge. Here’s what Merton has to say about le point vierge:
"At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives… This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our son-ship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere."
- This helps to understand the importance of the place of the heart in contemplative prayer and the way of the heart as communion with God
