FROM the Book of Proverbs comes this passage that shows us how God practically begs us to love him. “My child, give me your heart and let your eyes delight in my ways.” (23, 26) Note that he does not force us to love him, deferring to our sense of freedom, since that freedom would enable us to truly love him in return if we use it properly.
We just have to learn how to give our heart to him and to be delighted in his will and ways. Let’s remember that our heart is actually the metonym of our whole being. It means the entirety of our person and not just the organ that is only a part of our being, just as the crown is used to mean the king himself.
In other words, we have to learn to give our whole selves to God, much like what is expressed in a song, “I have no use for divided hearts / I give mine whole / and not in parts.”
Yes, in spite of the many incomprehensible mysteries that will be involved in our relation with God, we have to learn to give our whole heart to him, that is, to say, our whole selves. We just do not give what we consider to be the best of our being. We have to give everything, all the rest of us.
On the part of God, he has no problem receiving everything that we are and have, warts and all, because he is a father who loves us so much and who understands our weaknesses and mistakes, given our limitations and the tremendous reality full of mysteries that we have to contend with in this life.
We should just try our best, knowing that our best will never be enough. It can always be better. But God does not mind it. Like a father before a little child, he is willing to get dirty with us.
And before God, we are actually even less than a child, because his supernatural life which he likes to share with us, is so above our nature that we can never reach it using our powers alone. He is the one who enables us to reach it. He just wants that we would want it too. Thus, he begs us to give our heart and to be delighted in his ways, no matter how mysterious and difficult they are.
Let us get to know him more and more. And let us let that growing knowledge have the effect of making us love him more and more, that is, of giving our heart entirely to him in a progressive way. That’s because in this business of giving our heart to God, there is always room for growing in our total love, in our total self-giving to him. Love never says enough. By definition, it is something that is given without measure, without limit.
Let us not love God with our intellect alone, that is to say, to love him in theory alone, or in principle, but not in actual practice. Our love for God should involve our whole being, using all our powers, all the way to our feelings and passions, our imagination and memory, even in physical and material dimension of our life. It has a strongly moral dimension, and not just doctrine. It is deeds, not just good intentions and words.
We have to show that love in our family life, in our professional, social, political, cultural life, etc. God begs us to give our heart to him in all moments of our life, not only in our sacred moments but also in our mundane, temporal activities and concerns.
Let us help one another in learning to give our whole heart to God!/PN
