Wednesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
My attention is captured today by the refrain of the Responsorial Psalm. To you, O Lord, I lift my Soul. Similarly, in the Eucharistic Prayer of the Mass, we respond to the priest’s invitation to lift our hearts by saying we lift them up to the Lord. I invite us to reflect on what this “lifting” means, and then to focus our prayer today on consciously, actively lifting heart and soul to God.
This action of lifting heart and soul transcends the capability of our minds to comprehend. Lifting heart and soul is a spiritual exercise, not an intellectual one. This type of communion with God is more mystical, more contemplative. For some, this concept may seem quite abstract and difficult to conceptualize intellectually. But wrapping our minds around it is a beneficial starting point. Perhaps it’s helpful to read how the Church defines heart and soul.
“The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual . . . In Sacred Scripture the term ‘soul’ often refers to human life or the entire human person. But ‘soul’ also refers to the innermost aspect of [man,] that which is of greatest value in [him,] that by which [he] is most especially in God’s image . . . [Man,] though made of body and soul, is a unity . . . the unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ‘form’ of the body . . . Sometimes the soul is distinguished from the spirit . . . The Church teaches that this distinction does not introduce a duality into the soul. ‘Spirit’ signifies that from creation [man] is ordered to a supernatural end and that [his] soul can gratuitously be raised beyond all it deserves to communion with God . . . The spiritual tradition of the Church also emphasizes the heart, in the biblical sense of the depths of one’s being, where the person decides for or against God.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 362-368)
As we lift heart and soul to God, we find intimate communion with the One in whose image we are created. The lifted soul finds personal connection in the Divine where image and love can be most perfectly mirrored. When I lift my soul, I allow it to find itself within the realm of eternity. The lifted soul experiences glorious oneness with its Creator in the most intimate way possible, in true communion. The soul experiences the Divine through its immortality – when I lift my soul, I find God in a way that I imagine is as if I never left the eternal sphere to become embodied! As an exercise, I invite you today to spend some time quieting yourself, looking deep within, and see if you can connect with your soul in a very conscious way. Then lift your soul to the Lord, naked, vulnerable, desirous of only one thing – intimate communion that mirrors image and love with your Creator.
The Catechism tells us that we find our heart in the depths of our being. From the perspective of wisdom, Cynthia Bourgeault writes, “the heart is primarily an organ of spiritual perception, a highly sensitive instrument for keeping us aligned . . .” The heart is the seat of wisdom within us; we might say it is our “knower” through which we receive and perceive the things of God. When we lift our hearts, we seek the wisdom of God, we seek to enter the spiritual realm with God, we seek to know God more and to be receptive to all that God desires to reveal and give to us. The heart is that deepest place of “knowing” within us, the location of our ability to choose and know God. The heart also finds intimate communion with the Divine as it seeks to love and know God more. As an exercise, I invite you today to spend some time quieting yourself, looking deep within, and see if you can connect with your heart in a very conscious way. Then lift your heart to the Lord, naked, vulnerable, desirous of only one thing – intimate communion that draws you deeper into the wisdom of God.
Blessings to you on your journey of lifting today!
- Elizabeth Wourms