Your passionate heart

  • Read this the other day:

    When you feel that there is no peace in your heart, through an undue par­tial­ity towards any­thing earthly and worldly, and that, besides this, the heart breathes irri­tabil­ity and mal­ice, be imme­di­ately on your guard, and do not let your heart be filled with the dev­il­ish fire. Pray fer­vently, and strengthen by the power of God your pas­sion­ate, impa­tient heart. Be firmly assured that the evil is kin­dled in your heart by the enemy; he chiefly assaults the heart through a full stom­ach. This is from experience.

    – Fr. John of Kro­n­stadt, “My Life in Christ” p.109

    Your pas­sion­ate, impa­tient heart. The expres­sion caught my eye. That type of phrase is in the world’s cul­tural vocab­u­lary as well. But they don’t think it’s any­thing to be wor­rled about — quite the oppo­site, in fact. It made me think of the coun­try song “Emo­tional Girl”(**):

    I’m an emo­tional girl. I can’t help myself.
    Some­times I laugh, some­times I cry, some­times I do both and I don’t know why.
    I’ve got a pas­sion­ate heart, and that’s just the way things are.
    So you and me could give it a whirl,
    But I’m warn­ing you, boy, I’m an emo­tional girl.

    It’s a cute song, and I don’t want to over­re­act. But this qual­ity is really prized these days, to the point that just being pas­sion­ate is looked on as some kind of achieve­ment, no mat­ter what you’re pas­sion­ate about. Why is that? I kind of won­dered if it was a reac­tion against the oppres­sive cul­ture of Coolness.

    Kids since the 50′s have been try­ing to mas­ter that awful con­cept of supreme cool­ness. Noth­ing scares me, noth­ing moves me. I don’t care about any­thing. I don’t laugh, and I cer­tainly don’t cry.

    It seems to me like the Be Cool thing is a kind of evil mutant of the dis­pas­sion that the monas­tics aspired to. The first rung of St. John Cli­ma­cus’ “Lad­der of Divine Ascent” is a detach­ment from all worldly things — even life itself — and accord­ing to “Patris­tic The­ol­ogy,” the first stage on the way to theo­sis is to con­quer your pas­sions. But it was done with a supreme effort and because of a love of God, not indulged in by those who didn’t have a life and stem­ming more from misanthropy.

    Too much emo­tion, too lit­tle emo­tion. Both wrong, both cel­e­brated in the world’s cul­ture as if they were good.

    Just a thought for today, and stem­ming, as always, from my own pas­sion­ate, impa­tient heart. Lord, have mercy.


    Related posts:

    1. They see your heart
    2. Hush your heart
    4. Bright Fri­day and my wooden heart
    5. St. John of Kro­n­stadt, on prayer

    July 19th, 2009 | Grace | No Comments |

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