Over the mantel of my parents’ home hung a picture of the Sacred Heart. When I was a child, it provided the focus of our family’s First Friday activity. As an adult I came to reconsider that image when I rediscovered the feast of the Sacred Heart, celebrated on the Friday after the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. I blush to admit that while my family was busily accruing the benefits traditionally associated with the nine First Fridays, we were also completely overlooking the fundamental tenet of God’s relationship with us frail daughters and sons: God’s love is unearned, first, last and everything in between. God’s heart beats to the rhythm of love, and the mystery of Christ’s open heart vividly portrays God’s overarching, deep, passionate, merciful love for us. As a child I also missed another piece: this is a broken heart, pierced by a sword that cannot interrupt the beat of Christ’s heart poured out in his passion and death, or the outpouring of love in which the Father raised Christ from death. Like the broken bread that is his body, the broken heart of Christ is source of transforming mercy, life and love.

Now, as an adult, when I am faced with the question, “Where do we turn, what do we do when we’re broken-hearted?” I remember that image and turn to the broken-hearted Christ for wisdom, guidance and healing.

In Luke’s gospel, which we read on January 24, Jesus rises, unrolls the scriptures and reads from the prophet Isaiah. He proclaims the passage that we announce at the Chrism Mass, “… the Lord has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted” (Isaiah 61.1). As our memory roves through the stories of Jesus, we quickly meet the brokenhearted: the woman caught in adultery, the Samaritan woman at the well, the parents whose children are sick or dying or dead, Mary and Martha whose brother had died, Jesus who wept at Lazarus’ death, and over Jerusalem, the prodigal’s father, and, of course, the prodigal son himself, whom we meet this year on the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Here we gain the deepest insight into the power of a broken heart.

As the father runs to meet the child you can hear the sound of the sandals beating out the rhythm of his heart’s song: “Son – home – son – home – son – home – son … ” The father surprises even himself: this is a new side of fathering … his friends might laugh at him … “That kid made a complete fool of you” … but … The sandals pound out the rhythm: “Son – home – son – home – son – home – son … ” The son, having squandered one birthright, suddenly finds himself embraced by another: homecoming, tenderness, mercy, faithfulness, joy, delight, celebration, in short, new life, for “This son of mine was dead and is alive again.” The other son, lacking any real insight into his father (and presuming his own righteousness), simply doesn’t understand this prodigal generosity. Like the grumblers who sneer at Jesus’ sinful table companions, the other son can only berate the father for the depth and breadth of his mercy. He’s very shortsighted: he can’t imagine that one day, he might break his father’s heart and need similar tenderness. In fact, he can’t even recognize that he’s already receiving it. He hasn’t begun to discover what it means to be “son.”

Daughter, son. Whichever the gender, the broken heart of the One who is all mercy, all love, beats to the rhythm of those sandals. Our Abba—the name Jesus used when he addressed God—offers every single one of us the same healing birthright: mercy. Tenderness, compassion, faithfulness, love. “This child of mine was dead and now is alive again.” God, who has mothered us into being, is attached to us. That attachment is mercy: tenderness, compassion; that attachment is the wakeful ear that detects anguish almost before the cry has risen from our soul, the watchful eye that spots danger while we still sleep. We are bathed in God’s tenderness. It heals all our wounds, nourishes us and binds us to each other. Mercy is our new birthright.

But something else comes with this birthright. Normally an inheritance stops with the recipient. Not this time. The birthright isn’t ours to keep. We keep this mercy only by giving it away, by becoming “ambassadors of reconciliation.” Broken heart can speak to broken heart. The kid who has totally messed up his life knows it; the father does, too. Still the heart beats to those sandals. “My kid – home – my kid – home – my kid …”

What does our heart beat to? Is it, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and let’s see if you can make it?” Is it, “I told you so,” as a spouse, a friend, a child slinks home, hoping for refuge? Is it, “Let ‘em get what they deserve”? Is it, “I made it, so can she”? Is it, in the secret of our own hearts, “If you really knew (who I am, what I’ve done), there’d be no mercy for me …”? Or do we hear the rhythm: friend – home – kid – home – sister – home – stranger – home – sinner – home …

In the end, only mercy can heal a broken heart. As Lent begins, we are invited to be ambassadors of reconciliation—to bind up broken hearts. Wherever mercy is needed, that is where we are called to travel. Get those sandals on. Run. Be Christ’s broken, sacred heart for our world.

Bernadette Gaslein

Editor.celebrate@novalis.ca