Bleeding Heart

This morning I am remembering my first Maundy Thursday. I was coming into the Church at the Easter vigil that year. I had spent hours and hours in church, through the golden glitter of the Chrism mass, to the foot washing humility of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. Then I sat on the floor in front of the Tabernacle as we kept company with Jesus in His hour of torment.

How powerful it was. It moved me to tears, pierced my very soul. I remembered the horror of reading “The Power and the Glory” where an adulterer chooses to receive Jesus in a state of mortal sin and knowingly damns his soul. Then in the gravity of that terror I felt the deep joy bubbling up in me, that I could receive the living God worthily, that He could fill me, that I could have the promise of Heaven and eternal unity with Him.

In the overflow of that moment, sitting with the Lord in His power, in the agony of the garden, I meditated.

“This is my heart today. God has made me his home, my body his temple. This is not only a spiritual reality, but a physical reality.

For I receive Him on my tongue.

The baby that Mary birthed is on my tongue.

The God who said 'Whoever believes in me will live' is on my tongue.

The Man who said 'This is my Body, this is my Blood' is on my tongue.

The flesh that was pierced is on my tongue.

The body that was laid in the tomb is on my tongue.

The God-Man that conquered Death and rose again and ascended into the Heavens is on my tongue.

He is with me. He is in me. His home is in me, literally.

Alleluia indeed.

'Whoever loves me will keep my commandments, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home in him.'”