The world in my heart

Like most of the RSCJ in this country, I wear my profession cross on specific occasions, and my medal with our logo the rest of the time. Working in the diocese means I frequently come into contact with former students or others who know us, who instantly recognise the logo. With other people, it can be a useful icebreaker. As I did with a plumber some years ago, if someone asks me about the logo's significance, or the Sacred Heart, I can invite them to engage with it, and therefore with the truth and love it contains and reveals. The conversations are always illuminating, invariably opening up new layers of meaning and insight for me.

The simple, immediate explanation is that this logo depicts the Heart of God, embracing and holding the entire world. A Heart which is always open, and with the suffering and redemptive love of the Cross at its opening - the entry point to its depths. A Heart which calls me to union, and to embody its attitudes and openness. 

But earlier this week, something caused me to pause one morning, as I put my medal on, look at it anew, and think But this shows my heart, embracing and holding the world... My heart being opened by the suffering and redemptive love of the Cross... 

To hold the world in my heart... Isn't this, in essence, what must lie at the heart of my RSCJ vocation and my prayer? To allow my heart to be stretched and opened; to allow it to be pierced, as I hold and keep the world, and all its beauty and fragility, violence and pain, in my prayer, and in that wide-open, all-embracing Heart of healing, compassion and peace. And it's what lies within some words from our Constitutions, which gently bubbled up as I continued to reflect on this: 

In prayer we come to Him
with everything that touches our life,
with the sufferings and hope of humanity... 

To hold the world, and humanity, with love and tenderness, as well as the immense frustration and sadness I often feel... And to do what I can to work for the world's - for people's - healing and growth.

And you; how are you being called to hold the world, and all its wounds and wonders, in your heart...?