Unlocking a Full Heart
Michiel Peeters - Last week, the Lord gave those impractical, seemingly impossible recommendations: “Give to everyone who asks of you”; “Love your enemies…, pray for those who mistreat you.” These directives may seem excessive, but people—or moments in people’s lives—who live like this stand out as a novelty in their environment, signaling the beginning of a new world.
We have also seen that such attitudes are possible only for someone who lives with fullness. Today, Jesus says: “A good person, out of the store of goodness in his heart, produces good, but an evil person produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks.” The problem, then, lies in this fullness of the heart. Whoever has a “full” heart produces good.
A hundred thousand rules or all the moralism in the world cannot produce even one gram of goodness, whereas “a good person, out of the store of goodness in his heart—‘from the fullness of [his] heart’—produces good.” So, the question becomes: How is it possible to achieve such fullness of the heart?
This is where the need for a teacher arises. “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?” To attain this fullness of heart, we must follow someone who is already living it.
The greatest grace in life is finding a path to achieving what you desire most. Today, I have been at this parish for 12.5 years—the longest I’ve ever stayed anywhere—and I do not want to leave. If you do not want to leave, even after being somewhere for a long time, that’s intriguing: our hearts are made for the infinite, and each circumstance tends to become a prison unless, in that circumstance, you are touched by the infinite.
In my life, I have been touched by the infinite. I have met people who lived with this fullness of heart—and, enviously, I pursued them. That is my good fortune. For maturity comes through action. But how can you walk if you do not know the way? Therefore, the fundamental rule for this journey is simply this: following!
To follow! To follow those who already know the path, however they walk it. Because a teacher shows you the way with confidence and persuasiveness, through demonstration.
Your project to grow in maturity cannot originate from you alone. The crucial thing in life is recognizing a master, a teacher! You do not choose a teacher; you recognize them! This is called authority—an authority is someone who helps you understand and trains you to live each moment in proportion to its destiny. Every moment, according to its content—your relationship with your girlfriend, your father and mother, your teachers at school, your political group, or your community that weighs on you because it doesn’t do exactly what you’d like….
What we are is a result of the experience of following we live. This following passes through the signs of people—men and women—those individuals God has led me to meet. Over time, though always following these people, it becomes more clearly and directly Christ, who is the only master: “You have but one Master!”
(Fr. Giussani, 5 December 1976, https://backend.clonline.org/storage/boyd-2021-english.pdf)
The author has not revised the text and its translations.
