I Am Mostly Heart

I was born on the Feast of the Sacred Heart and that is why Ima had me christened ‘Jesus’. This may also perhaps be the reason why I am a person of the heart. A hopeless romantic, like the poet Lord Byron. A romantic fool, like the errant knight Don Quixote.

I always love an intellectually stimulating conversation. I can shoot the breeze with friends for hours in an intellectual discourse and debate on the most mundane of topics. I love puzzles and I take great pleasure in challenging myself intellectually.

But when it comes to most of my life decisions, I listen to my heart. When I left home and entered the seminary, young as I was, it was my heart that urged me on. I wanted to serve the world and mankind. When I left the seminary, it was not reason but the murmurings of my heart that pushed me. Of course, when I fell in love and married Anabelle, it was all heart. I did not calculate the cost nor compute the returns nor tallied up any score. I simply listened to my heart and followed its bidding.

There are times reason and logic comes in handy. But I have always included this quotation from Pascal among my all-time favorites, “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” (Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.) For after all, love is all I need.

You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation.
~ Isaiah 12

Since it was preparation day,
in order that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the sabbath,
for the sabbath day of that week was a solemn one,
the Jews asked Pilate that their legs be broken
and they be taken down.
So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first
and then of the other one who was crucified with Jesus.
But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead,
they did not break his legs,
but one soldier thrust his lance into his side,
and immediately blood and water flowed out.
An eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true;
he knows that he is speaking the truth,
so that you also may come to believe.
For this happened so that the Scripture passage might be fulfilled:
Not a bone of it will be broken.
And again another passage says:
They will look upon him whom they have pierced.
John 19:31-37