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In her messages in Medjugorje, Our Lady often speaks to us about the heart. The heart is the center of our spiritual life, which is nurtured by Our Lady’s presence. The heart is important. Holy Scriptures mentions heart three hundred times. When we speak about heart, we mean the center of our life, our feelings and desires.
The human heart is by nature evil, deceitful and treacherous. Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9). The first fall of man affected the deepest parts of our being. Our mind, feelings, and desires are tainted by sin.
In Mark’s Gospel we read the words of Jesus, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man“ (Mk 7:21-23).
Our problem is not external, but internal. We need an internal transformation, a renewal and a change of heart. The heart is the core of our being and the Bible places great emphasis on keeping our hearts pure: „Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flow the springs of life“ (Proverbs 4:23).
We know from the Gospels that Jesus often got into arguments with people who, for religious reasons, considered outward purity to be the most important thing.
And then Jesus said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him“ (Mk 7:14-15).
Jesus teaches us that the human heart is the place where evil thoughts are born. Those ideas are later gradually realized. All things first begin with a thought, then pass into words, then into deeds, and thus the thoughts are visible in the world. Our actions are born in the heart.
Newspapers and the media are full of advice on healthy diet. But no media talks about the poison that enters a person through the media, through harmful content, negative news, fornication and pornography. No food can destroy us like the evil that enters the human heart. There are people who have seen painful and horrible scenes on television and for years they have not been able to get rid of those images because they remain inside them and they come up in their thoughts, in their minds and in their hearts.
If we nourish ourselves with spiritually poisoned food, we ourselves will become poisoned and we will poison others with the contents of our hearts.
Our Lady, as a mother, cares for our hearts. She wants them to be pure and capable of a relationship with God. It is impossible to have a good relationship with God if our heart is poisoned and impure. Our heart is made for love. Our heart will follow the ideal, God, grace and love if it is purified and renewed to receive the purity of God’s love.
Let us pray: Our Lady, you who had a pure and immaculate heart, grant us purity and renewal of our hearts from your son, which are not always pure. We want to entrust to the Lord our ways and all our worries. We want to fix our eyes on the Lord, take up our daily cross and follow Jesus – as he has taught us and as he calls us to do. Our Lady, to you we entrust our hearts and especially those that are wounded, closed and hard. May we, by God’s grace, forgive our neighbors and ourselves as God has forgiven us with a compassionate heart. With a humble heart, we also want to pray for all those to whom we have remained indebted, whom we have hurt and distanced from God. To your motherly intercession we entrust all the lost, the wounded and the hurting, that they may find their way back to the truth, joy and peace that only the Lord gives us. Amen.
