"Do you know that you have a small heart murmur?" she asked, stethoscope pressed to my chest.
Dumbfounded I stuttered "Well, no."
And here I'd been anxious about my blood sugar levels - which turned out to be normal, this time.
"I'd like you to get a heart sonogram," Nicole, the new P.A., continued. "It's probably nothing to worry about, but we should check for clogged arteries."
Don't you love it when "It's probably nothing" and "check for clogged arteries" appear in the same sentence?
So I wondered and wondered: Did Nicole discover something that other Doctors have missed? Did my Doctor know about the murmur and not consider it worth telling me about? Was I born with a heart murmur? Did one just develop?
So today I lay on my side as the technician ran her gel-covered instrument over my chest and listened to the various sounds my heart makes, low and ponderous or high and quickly pattering, all muffled as if emanating from deep underwater.
Nothing makes me confront my own mortality like the small, lonely sounds of my heart.
"One day you will stop," I say to this so-central organ of mine. I saw what happens when a heart stops in April, my mother lying on her nursing home bed unmoving, her heart stilled forever. I think of my young son's heart stopping in an ambulance, overcome by a seizure. It's in the nature of hearts that they're fragile, and that when they stop, they stop a life.
But, thinking about this tonight, I wonder further. We have wonderful tests to check for clogged arteries. But do we have tests to check for our clogged spiritual arteries? "Heart" is a name for our love center, our ability to connect with God and the world. We have arteries, or hoses, conveying the life of grace to our spiritual hearts so they'll "beat" for others - but how often are those arteries clogged by the cholesterol of hate? The cholesterol of prejudice? The cholesterol of indifference? The cholesterol of hurt pride? Maybe the spiritual artery that connects our love center to a particular person or group of persons in our life is totally blocked!
Our prayer should be "Lord, take away the cholesterol of un-love that clogs the arteries of our stony hearts! And give us natural, healthy hearts like the heart of your son Jesus."
Each one of us is called to be a "beating heart" in our own corner of the world, a heart flooded with grace which streams through unclogged arteries so that we keep God's love alive and active, healing and regenerating, for those who surround us and hunger and thirst for spiritual sustenance. Those who are spiritually and emotionally hungry could be our families. Or our religious communities. Or our parishioners. Or our co-workers. Our students. Our patients. Our clients. Our neighbors.
Our physical hearts are fragile. They won't beat on this earth forever. Our spiritual hearts are fragile; how easily their arteries are clogged by depression, disappointment, frustration, anger, fear. But when our spiritual hearts beat irregularly, so many lives are affected beyond our own! Those who rely on our prayers, our kind words, our caring, to bring life and love and sunshine into their lives. Our spiritual hearts are fragile; if through neglect we allow them to stop, it stops our spiritual life. We're dead inside!
Test your spiritual heart. It's simple: ask yourself if there is anyone or any group whom you cannot bring yourself to love, or to worry over, or to care if they live or die. If so, it's a sure sign that you have a clogged spiritual artery, that God's grace is unable to get through. If we test ourselves honestly, prayerfully, and a number of our spiritual arteries are clogged, or even totally blocked, desperate times call for desperate measures. At that point we need a heart transplant. We need to throw our now-useless hearts away and receive Christ's heart instead.
Only Christ's heart will beat steadily inside us for eternity. How wonderful it is to say, "Lord, take my heart and give me your heart with which to love your world." Jesus' heart is the only heart that won't falter. Jesus' heart is the only heart that won't quit. Jesus' heart is the only heart expansive enough that the whole world fits inside it. Jesus' heart is the beating heart of the world.
How can we love with the heart of Jesus? Pope Francis suggests
"Jesus does not look at reality from the outside, without letting himself be moved, as if he were taking a picture. He lets himself get involved. This kind of compassion is needed today to conquer the globalization of indifference. This kind of regard is needed when we find ourselves in front of a poor person, an outcast, or a sinner. This is the compassion that nourishes the awareness that we too are sinners."
Yes, we too are sinners, because we all have semi-clogged spiritual arteries, we all have an aversion to being connected to the rest of the world by arteries flowing with grace. Pope Francis reminds us "Let us always remember the words of St. John of the Cross: 'In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone."