A Meeting Place with the Heart of God

Luke 7:36-8:3, Gospel reading from Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

The person who is aware of the mercy that has been poured out upon him tends to be filled with gratitude. This gratitude wells up in love and expresses itself through praise and thanksgiving to God, and through acts of charity toward neighbor. 

This takes a certain self-awareness, a humble recognition that one is truly a sinner in need of divine mercy. It is in confronting his own poverty and bringing it to the feet of the Savior that the sinner is able to begin to comprehend the meaning of love. 

In this encounter between misery and mercy, I find my meeting place with the heart of God. As long as I entertain an illusory self-sufficiency, I am unable to enter into this encounter. The Gospel teaches me to take a hard look at myself (and take my eye off of you), and to bring what I find, which is my broken self, to the feet of the Lord.