The Mystery Of The Heart
By DONALD DeMARCO
In his book, Prayer, Hans Urs von Balthasar makes an arresting statement: “Man is the being who bears in his heart a mystery greater than himself.” This is a statement that is rich in implication and warrants further explication. At first, it appears to be a contradiction. How can a liter carton of milk, for example, contain within itself more than a liter? How can anything, for that matter, be more than it is?
The spiritual dimension, however, cannot be understood by a mathematical approach. The fact that the human heart can contain something greater than the person, although a mystery, is not a contradiction.
Our individuality is most evident to us, as attested by our powerful instinct for self-preservation. No one has to explain our individuality to us. It is the most immediately obvious aspect of our existence. But there is far more to us than our individuality. If we live as mere individuals, roaming in the midst of strangers, we radically shortchange ourselves. This is why narcissism, hedonism, and materialism fail to satisfy the whole person.
Excessive preoccupation with individuality leads to the unrealistic notion that we can be autonomous, wholly independent of others, self-sufficient.
The heart symbolizes the moral and spiritual center of our lives. The Book of Proverbs enjoins us to “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (iv. 23). The Greeks had three words for life. Bios refers to individual biological life; psuche refers to the conscious life of the individual. Zoe refers to life that transcends mere individuality, whether biological or psychological. It refers to life that can be shared.
This notion of zoe was essential for Christianity since Christ’s life is shared with others, and Christians are commanded to share their lives with their neighbors. Zoe means that there is in each human being, the “heart” if we need a name, which is greater than individuality and can be shared with others as well as with God. Zoe makes prayer not only a possibility but a personally fulfilling.
Jacques Maritain offers a penetrating insight into the dynamic of the zoe life of the heart. He states that when we get in touch with this deeper dimension of our being — the mystery of the heart, in von Balthasar’s words — we find that we “superexist.” At this moment, “the Self is transfigured” and we discover “the basic generosity of existence.” Then, as Maritain goes on to explain, we realize “that love is not a passing pleasure or emotion, but the very meaning of [our] being alive” (Existence and the Existent, pp. 89-90).
The purpose of life, therefore, is to give. We find ourselves when we discover that the meaning of our lives is to give of ourselves.
We find physical counterparts that attest to our nature as lovers and givers. A woman’s uterus and her breast milk are not there for her own individual benefit. They exist to receive and nourish the lives of others. In this regard, they represent something greater than herself and fit smoothly into the notion that the essential purpose of life is to give. And this is why, “it is better to give than to receive.”
Von Balthasar’s statement has direct reference to prayer, though it is equally applicable to the nature of the human being as capable of superexisting. The heart is, to use a mechanical image, a kind of radio receiving set that, when it is turned on, is tuned to God. Prayer is a dialogue. We could not receive God’s initial signal if we did not possess an inner ability that is designed to receive it. One cannot knock on the door if there is no door to receive the knock.
But in addition to receiving God’s Word, our heart functions as a kind of transmitter, capable of answering it. Autonomous man is a myth; man is meant to engage in prayer with God and to share the love in his heart with others. It is far better to strive for magnanimity than to be lured by the mirage of autonomy.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest work, How To Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad, is available through Amazon.com. Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum.)
