“Son, give me your heart, and your eyes shall keep my ways” (Antiphon of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus).
In the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord tells us, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8). This promise corresponds to the antiphon we heard today. When we surrender our heart to our Heavenly Father, the eyes of our soul are opened and we begin to see everything around us – even God Himself – in His light. “For with thee is the fountain of life; in thy light do we see light” (Psalm 36:9).
As soon as we surrender our hearts to the Lord, the Holy Spirit can act powerfully within us and penetrate our souls with His light. In this way, He dispels the blindness that prevents us from discovering God in all things and tears away the dark night of ignorance that hides the true key to life from us. The Holy Spirit begins to enlighten our hearts with His presence, inviting us to join our voices in praising God’s glory and recognizing His goodness and wisdom more and more.
Our inner eyes focus on the ways of God. The heart longs to know the desires of its beloved Lord and promptly wants to fulfill them. God draws it to Himself, so that it is increasingly freed from its self-centeredness and all that is rigid in it is released.
Divine love enlarges the heart, making the deep yearning to give oneself completely to the Lord grow, without reserving anything. The heart begins to suffer because it is still limited, because it does not love as much as it would like, and because it is not as attentive to the Beloved as it should be.
This suffering deeply purifies the heart, making its inner eyes focus more on the ways of the Lord. It tries to fulfill all that the wisdom of God has arranged for it, day after day, hour after hour.