A New Heart

“I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts. I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes...” Ezekiel 36:26-27

Even saints like Saint Paul found it hard to follow God sometimes. He mourned in the 7th chapter of Romans that he did not understand his own actions. “I do not do what I want, but I do THE VERY THING I HATE.....I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” He said he was wretched indeed, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” (Romans 7:21-25)

Saint Augustine battled against God before succumbing to His spirit. “Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.”  Sometimes like Saint Augustine, we are beguiled by the “lovely”, shiny things in this world, things that entice us far away from God. Sadly, if we rely on our own strength and power, we will be frustrated like Saint Paul. We need the promise of God, a new heart and a new spirit that He is willing to place within us. 

Today we celebrate the feast day of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Amazingly, at the age of 22, he, his four brothers, and 25 of his friends entered the Abbey of Citeaux, because they feared the ways of the world! He wrote the famous words, “ The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. Do we need to fear the world? I do not think so. God placed us where we are, and I believe He uses this world to make us better people. The world is a huge saint-making machine as I have heard some say. We just need to be aware that we have an enemy who tries to deceive us, and lure us with “pretty things”, not showing us the “fine print”, the long term consequences of sin. Let us claim God’s promise of a new heart and a new spirit!