“Establish your heart, for the Lord’s coming is near.”

• Strange term = “ground, settle, strengthen, root, embed” the heart, the deepest core of your identity.
• Suggests deep conviction, peace
• “for” = Christ’s coming is the reason for establishing
• Opposite of establish = uncertain, erring, wandering, fearful, divided, all over the place, without roots

In what exactly am I supposed to establish my heart?

• Could it be in my personal convictions, outlook, frame of mind, emotions, feelings? But these are changeable, sometimes frequently.
• Could it be in my loved ones? Yes, but many of them will establish their hearts in you. Human being, however dear, are as fragile as you are. Offer no lasting foundation, since they too are mortal.
• Christ Himself: the ground of all hearts. Unchanging, ever faithful, compassionate, true, loving, healing from sickness, sin and death. He turns around the brokenness of humanity and of the earth and nature.

How do I establish my heart in Christ?

• Let Him in to your heart by asking Him to come in and by allowing Him entry when He knocks on your door.
• St. Teresa of Avila’s “interior castle”: Christ enters from the threshold to reign sovereignly in you and with you
• Trust Him more than anyone, trust Him with everything you are and have, especially your love, your suffering, your sin and your death.
• Make your home in me as I make mine in you. Abide in me as I in you. As the Father has loved me so I have loved you. Abide in my love. I am the vine, you are the branches.
• Assisi experience: the Lord made me understand that my own sinful and wounded heart was no longer mine, but His. And His was mine.
• Poem Sir Philip Sidney, a few lines:

My true-love hath my heart and I have his,

By just exchange one for the other given:

I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;

There never was a bargain better driven.

His heart in me keeps me and him in one;

My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:

He loves my heart, for once it was his own;

I cherish his because in me it bides.

• In being open to establishing my heart in Christ, I discover that it is really He who establishes it in Himself.

Requires an act of total self-consecration to Christ

• Not just for professional religious people, but for all.
• As if I take my entire self up in my arms, including my past and future, and simply hand it over to Christ: Here, my loving Lord, I am all yours.
• Fruit is an immense and deep peace and an immense and deep joy
• Gaudete in Domino: literally, IN the Lord.
• Abide in my love. I have said this so that my own joy may be in you and your joy be complete. Complete with the joy of God and with all others who are One with Him, from the earliest times to the last, in this life and in the next.
• Such joy far surpasses the very pleasant but passing joy of our social Christmas celebrations. It is a joy which goes to the very root and reason of Christmas as to the meaning of the life, suffering, death and Resurrection of our Saviour. That root and reason are simply the eternal love of God, the eternal joy of God.
• So, establish your heart in Him, for the coming of the Lord is near.