“Were not our hearts burning within us
while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?”
“Speak, Lord, to the heart of your servant, that my heart may speak with You” (Guigo). This is the whole amazing mystery of God’s Word, coming once again to its fulfilment in our heart. For a time our heart may slumber on; but God’s Spirit is already present within it and unbeknown to us is crying out to the Father. The same Spirit of God is present also in God’s Word that comes into our heart from outside. From the very outset there exists an affinity between the Word from outside, awakening us, and the Spirit watching and waiting in our sleeping heart. The heart of man was made to receive the Word, and the Word adapts itself to the dimensions of our human heart. The one is there for the other. The Word is sown in the heart. But for that the heart must be cleansed and made ready. For normally our heart is hardened and our spirit closed up. It is dull and slow to believe. It is full of darkness. It is easily weighed down with cares and pleasures. For these reasons it is unable to relish its spiritual food: the Word of God.
But when the Word of God accosts our heart, then suddenly and quite unexpectedly the one may recognize the other, thanks to the one Spirit who is present in both. A bridge is made, as it were, between our heart and the Word. From heart to Word a spark is transmitted. Between the Spirit lying dormant deep within our heart and the Spirit who is active in the Word a fruitful and vitalizing dialogue begins. Engendered from an imperishable seed, the heart is born again of the Word. We recognize in the Word, as in a mirror, our new countenance. By it we become witnesses to our rebirth in Christ. ‘The hidden man of the heart’ awakens within us.
So the Word penetrates to the very depths of our being, like a sharp and two-edged sword, cleaving between soul and spirit, joints and marrow and generating new life in us. The Word lays our heart quite bare. Now, and only now, can our untrammeled heart really and truly proceed to listen to God’s Word. Deeper and deeper it penetrates. Word and heart mirror each other and come to resemble each other more and more. The heart is aware of itself now as a new organ, with new senses and a sensibility previously unknown.
… The Word of God comes to us in many different ways. A passage read out in church during a celebration of the eucharist may prepare us for receiving bread and wine changed by the power of the Word into the body and blood of Christ. It may be the Word of Scripture proclaimed to the brothers ‘in full assembly.’ The Word may also be imparted to me by a brother or sister, just as the still unrecognized Jesus expounded the Scriptures to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. ‘Did not our hearts burn within us?’ (Lk 24:32)”
– André Louf, Teach Us to Pray –
