Open our hearts, O Lord, to listen to the words of your Son. // Gospel Acclamation (based on Acts 16:14b)

Lately, I’ve begun each morning by asking our Lady to open my heart just a sliver. 

Trials and traumas calloused parts of my heart that I can’t even detect, and I’m too weary to open my heart with my own parched strength. I need my heavenly Mother to do it. And I know the Holy Spirit can enter my heart through a mere sliver and move mightily.

In today’s First Reading, David is wracked with grief over the loss of Israel’s king and his best friend (see 2 Samuel 1:1-4, 11-12, 19, 23-27). He is clearly shaken. In the Gospel, the people who knew Jesus while He was growing up were hardened against His preaching because they refused to or were unable to see Him as He was (see Mark 3:20-21).  

How often do we find ourselves in these states? Broken and desperate, cold and unbelieving. 

But the Gospel Acclamation reveals the proper response in these moments: “Open our hearts, O Lord, to listen to the words of your Son.”

Particularly in these overwhelming moments, we need the truth of Christ’s words to penetrate our hardened hearts and heal what cannot be healed by human effort. Yet we cannot even open our hearts by ourselves. We need His grace to do so. We must simply desire to be open to God, to turn our gaze toward Him, and to invite Him to help us. 

And He will. Every single time. 

He will “rouse [His] power, and come to save us” (Psalm 80:3). Jesus longs to save, heal, and restore us. He begins that work here on earth, for most of us will complete it in purgatory, so that we will be completely healed when He leads us into Heaven. He is aware of our weaknesses. He is not deterred. 

So today, ask Jesus to open your heart. Invite Mary to help you do so. Ask the Lord for the grace of healing and belief, direction and salvation. Be faithful in this request, and you will witness how much He can do with a sliver of supplication.