Today’s First Reading recounts how the people were “cut to the heart” when they heard Peter’s preaching. It is telling that Peter’s words are not received by the people at the level of their heads or minds. That is not enough. Instead, the people must have their existential depths—their hearts—opened for the Resurrection to transform their lives.
St. Ignatius understood as much. He explains in the Spiritual Exercises that “what fills and satisfies the soul consists, not in knowing much, but in our understanding the realities profoundly and in savoring them interiorly.”
We live in an information-soaked age, with bits of data rushing through our smart phones and computer screens and across our restless minds. Where can I find space today to let the truth of the Resurrection move beyond my busy mind and cut into the depths of my heart?
—Vincent Strand, S.J., a Jesuit scholastic of the Wisconsin Province, is studying theology in preparation for priestly ordination at the International College of the Gesù in Rome.