Lenten Reflection #2 – Listening to Christ’s Heartbeat

Alas… I’d really hoped to be able to blog daily, but I can see this just isn’t going to be practical. So I’ll try to reflect as least once a week on these readings – more if there’s time and inspiration.

So. On to Rolheiser…

I’m meditating on two readings – the one for the First Sunday of Lent and also the Monday of the First Week of Lent. In it Rolheiser describes a passage in John’s gospel where the disciple Jesus loved reclines on his the breast. (John 13:23) Rolheiser says:

“This is an image, a mystical one. Among other things, it is a picture of gentleness. What it shows, however, is not a saccharine piety, a sweetness hard to swallow, but a softness that comes from being at peace, from being so rooted and centered in a love that one can look out at the world without bitterness, anger, jealousy, the sense of being cheated, and the need to blame or compete with others.”

I would add that it is an intimacy not easily found even among people who know each other well. As children we do this, of course. We find comfort in the heartbeat of our mothers and fathers and loved ones, but soon we are taught to put up boundaries. We reject the touch of another – we are repulsed by the “cooties” of our schoolmates; and then as we age and begin to form attachments we are unsettled by our physical reactions to another’s touch and once we gain a certain intimacy we resent and are threatened by our mates touching someone else; eventually perhaps we are even indifferent to their touch – having felt it before we assume there is nothing new to experience in it.

Do we become indifferent to Christ’s touch that way too? What would we hear if we were to remain still and centered and lean on His chest? What mysteries are contained in the regular rhythm of the Son’s heartbeat and the even in-and-out of His breath?

My own inner workings are relaxing as I’m thinking about it, imagining my own head upon His breast… my breath rising and falling with His and my heart adjusting its beat to play in concert with Him.

Even in the midst of a wilderness of humming technology and office conversation, peace is at hand.