God puts us into this world with huge hearts. The human heart in itself, when not closed off by fear, wound, and paranoia, is the antithesis of pettiness. There’s nothing small about the human heart.
Ron Rolheiser, OMI
THE SIZE OF OUR HEARTS
The early Church Fathers taught that each of us has two hearts, two souls.
In each person, they affirmed, there is a small, petty heart, a pusilla anima. This is the heart that we operate out of when we are not at our best. This is the heart within which we feel our wounds, are chronically irritated and angry, the heart within which we feel the unfairness of life, the heart within which we sense others as a threat, the heart within which we feel envy and bitterness, and the heart within which greed, lust, and selfishness break through.
But the Church Fathers taught that inside of each of us there was also another heart, a magna anima, a huge, deep, big, generous, and noble heart. This is the heart within which we feel empathy and compassion, where we are enflamed with noble ideals. This is the heart where we inchoately feel God’s presence in faith and hope and are able to move out to others in charity and forgiveness. Inside each of us, sadly often buried under suffocating wounds that keep if far from the surface, lies the heart of a saint, bursting to get out.
John of the Cross says the most effective way to move towards healing is not by focusing on the moral and spiritual areas within which we particularly struggle.
For him, we heal and grow and eventually “cauterize” our faults by fanning the flames of what is already virtuous, best, inside us. As we fan our virtues to full flame, those fires eventually burn out our selfishness and our wounds.
Our virtues, when fanned to full-flame, leave no room inside us for pettiness and small-heartedness.
Fanning what’s highest in us eventually moves us more and more towards living out of our big hearts rather than petty hearts.
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