I began the blog just a few weeks ago with the motto of the Venerable John Henry Newman: Cor ad cor loquitur (heart speaks to heart). Have made reference to John Calvin and his warning that the heart is an idol maker. To Proverbs 4:23: “Above all else guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.” To Psalm 95: "If today you hear His voice, harden not your heart."





Gerard Serafin goes to the trouble of making sure that his every reference to the heart is printed in red. James Cordrey, following John Eldredge and other guides, has been thinking and writing on the wild and restless heart and the sacred romance. Our father Augustine sounds in our ears: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” And Paul (1Cor 2:9) quotes Isaiah: Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the wonders that God hath prepared for them that love him.





And now Friday in the octave of Corpus Christi, the great feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Think of Anselm’s writing that the heart of man in His presence will scarcely be able to comprehend the joy that will belong to it from so great a good. That, in order to encompass it, the hearts of His beloved will themselves need be taken up into the joy of their Lord.





And compared to such a prospect, what isn’t dross, and how can we keep from singing?





Herman Joseph of Cologne's majestic hymn Summi Regis Cor Aveto, traditional for this feast, is not available but here is O Love, how deep, how broad, how high, whose authorship in the Latin by Thomas a Kempis there is no compelling reason to doubt.