Heart of My Heart

By Mary Katharine Deeley

"Beloved, we are God's children now;

what we shall be has not yet been revealed." 

1 John 3:2

I remember the most beautiful birth announcement I ever saw. The picture on the front showed the mother's and father's EKGs in red and blue. Superimposed on them was the baby's EKG in green. The caption simply read, "Heart of my heart." For those parents and that child, the phrase summed up the love, the hope, and the dream that this birth represented for all of them. It celebrated life passed on from parent to child, from this generation to the next.

I cannot help but think Mary and Joseph thought of Jesus as "heart of my heart," knowing he was that and so much more. Perhaps they dreamed about what he would become, how he would fulfill his place in his Father's plan.

Is it not this way for the Church - whose very hope is that the children of God will enter the world boldly, burning with the gifts they've been given and empowered by their living faith in the one whose voice they knew?

It is Christ, this child whose birth we celebrate, who brings us to the light of faith. Christ gives us a voice to follow and becomes the way by which we walk. Christ, and the mother who gave him life, and the father who nurtured him dare us to journey into the world with passion, courage, and hope.

If we do it right, the world will see our hearts beat and know that God's heartbeat provides the foundation for our lives. Then, at the end God will look at us and say in low and soothing tones, "heart of my heart."