The Gaze of His Heart

Truth be told, I struggled to write an article this week which is why it is being sent out later than usual. However, I decided to share with you some of the thoughts I had while reading through Pope Francis’ fourth encyclical titled Dilexit Nos (He Loved Us) which was released last week. While reading, I was struck most by Francis’ description of the gaze of Jesus.

It’s a brief section and in those short paragraphs, Francis describes the attentive disposition with which Jesus beholds the people he meets in Scripture and each one of us. He specifically references two Scripture passages of encounter, the rich young man and the brothers Andrew and Peter, then James and John.

“The Gospel tells us that a rich man came up to Jesus, full of idealism yet lacking in the strength needed to change his life. Jesus then “looked at him” (Mk 10:21). Can you imagine that moment, that encounter between his eyes and those of Jesus? If Jesus calls you and summons you for a mission, he first looks at you, plumbs the depths of your heart and, knowing everything about you, fixes his gaze upon you. So it was when, “as he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers... and as he went from there, he saw two other brothers” (Mt 4:18, 21).”¹

Jesus looks at each of us with love, sees us for who we really are — and who we can become — and invites us to collaborate in Christ’s mission in a way that is unique to the person God has made us to be. He invites us to answer our vocation. He sees our failures and shortcomings, but remains undeterred in His love and His invitation.

His call to the rich young man is one of complete surrender to Divine Providence, to leave all his material possessions behind and to follow Him. It wasn’t enough to just follow the letter of the law of Moses; his vocation would be found in a complete relinquishment to the will of God.

The same with the pair of brothers who Jesus calls from the seashore. These brothers’ calling to vocation started with Jesus locking eyes and calling them by name to a radical change of life to follow Him. Side note: Growing up, I attended a rural Catholic parish that was located a few minutes away from Lake Ontario. So, naturally during the summer in Ordinary time, a frequent hymn (i.e. every weekend) was “Lord, You Have Come to the Seashore.” Anytime I hear or read the story of Jesus calling His first disciples I can still hear discordant guitar strings and the first line in the chorus: “O, Lord, with your eyes set upon me, gently smiling, you have spoken my name…”

Jesus’ gaze isn’t a neutral force; it is an affirmation of our vocation and a reminder that our vocation is bound up in mission. Christ beckons us, and we respond.

Elena Bosetti, in her reflection on the Gospel of Matthew, notes the gaze of Christ and how within it He beckoned the first disciples to their vocation :

“The first thing Jesus does is call four men to follow him, to share this mission and his destiny… Jesus is walking, with his gaze open to the world around him and to the fisherman intent on casting their nets into the sea or hauling them to shore. He passes alongside daily life molded by work and fatigue, but also by hope, and encounters people. He passes as God knows how to pass, with a penetrating and creative gaze…For these first disciples, to follow the Master meant a response signaling the end of one way of life and the beginning of another. Everything suddenly became relative to their call. Even the most precious things would be put aside for the sake of entrusting oneself with unlimited faith to the God who was encountered in the Gospel preached by Jesus.”²

Jesus’ very gaze called these men to their vocation. His gaze was indifferent to the obstacles in their lives which may have stopped them from answering. His call to mission was a radical upheaval of the life they had known all their lives and in response, they set their old life aside and trusted that their surrender to God would bear fruit or, more accurate to their previous profession, bring in a big catch. (See what I did there?)

The gaze of Christ’s unflinching heart pierces through any and all false masks of insecurity. He stares right down into your own heart and exposes the core desires of the soul. He fans the flames for vocation as our hearts burn with the desire to fulfill the call of God to love and be loved. The question is, are we courageous enough to answer His gaze? Can we level our heart with His? Can we confidently say that we answered the call, surrendering our will to His?

I couldn’t help but connect Francis’ reflections on surrendering the the gaze of Jesus to a novena I had prayed right at the beginning of my illness, The Surrender Novena by Fr. Dolindo Ruotolo.

Fr. Dolindo was a contemporary of St. Padre Pio and a priest who was known to have a keen understanding of the human soul. More often than not, he was comforting those who were suffering. He chose to suffer for others through penance and accepted to suffer whatever God permitted.

Fr. Dolindo was greatly devoted to surrendering himself to God’s Will and our Blessed Mother.  Despite suffering greatly throughout his life, he offered a “prescription” to his parishioners and those who came to him for counsel: “Divine remedy: divine obedience to the Will of God mixed with daily drops of the Hail Mary.” He availed himself of this remedy quite often, as he was devoted to praying the Rosary and composed a novena of surrender to Jesus. Based around the repetition of the simple phrase, “O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!” this novena encourages each of us to abandon ourselves to the Will of God and allow ourselves to be transformed by His grace.³

I began this novena the day I was diagnosed with my chronic illness and it quickly became a lifeboat in those early days of uncertainty when I didn’t know what treatment would like, if this was a life long condition, or how my life would have to change to accommodate my new physical and mental restrictions. As someone who prays the Jesus Prayer everyday, (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner), I found great comfort and familiarity in repeating the same petition at the end of each day’s novena prayer:

O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything!

Such a simple phrase, but one that calls us to radically drop what we think God’s plan is for our life and accept the vocation He is calling us to. It invokes that same posture of heart that the rich young man and the brothers by the sea had to confront: Can you leave your old life behind and follow me?

The front of the novena booklet often depicts an antique French holy card with an image of the Sacred Heart as seen by St. Mary Margaret Alocoque, the patron saint of the Sacred Heart, and the words Our Lord said to her in His apparitions:

“Wherever this Image is exposed and honored, it will attract all kinds of blessings,” along with, “Behold the Heart that has loved mankind so much. It is pure Love and Mercy!”

In his encyclical, Francis took the time to reflect on St. Margaret’s intense visions of Christ where he informed her that she was to be the chosen ambassador to spread devotion to his Sacred Heart, and her contemporary St. Claude de La Colombière who defended her apparitions.

“Some of the language of Saint Margaret Mary, if poorly understood, might suggest undue trust in our personal sacrifices and offerings. Saint Claude insists that contemplation of the heart of Jesus, when authentic, does not provoke self-complacency or a vain confidence in our own experiences or human efforts, but rather an ineffable abandonment in Christ that fills our life with peace, security and decision. He expressed this absolute confidence most eloquently in a celebrated prayer:

“My God, I am so convinced that you keep watch over those who hope in you, and that we can want for nothing when we look for all in you, that I am resolved in the future to live free from every care and to turn all my anxieties over to you... I shall never lose my hope. I shall keep it to the last moment of my life; and at that moment all the demons in hell will strive to tear it from me… Others may look for happiness from their wealth or their talents; others may rest on the innocence of their life, or the severity of their penance, or the amount of their alms, or the fervour of their prayers. As for me, Lord, all my confidence is confidence itself. This confidence has never deceived anyone… I am sure, therefore, that I shall be eternally happy, since I firmly hope to be, and because it is from you, O God, that I hope for it”.”⁴

When thinking about the devotion to the Sacred Heart, we must also be devoted to the will of God in our lives, surrendering to every blessing and suffering He permits us to experience. God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not ours. (Is 55:8) Can we trust Him to know better than we do what is good for us? Certainly we should, yet so many of us have turned our backs not our faces to Him. (Jer 7:24)

If we surrender our gaze to that of Christ’s, our hearts can rest in His. We can let go of the control we think we should exert over every facet in our lives and let His Heart reign above it all. I encourage each of you to pray this novena if you haven’t already or if you haven’t in a long time. It a powerful reminder of the necessity to, as the cliché goes, “let go and let God.”

I am trying to level my gaze with Christ’ Sacred Heart during this time in my life where I feel like I have lost all control. I know that He loves me and my vocation is ultimately to answer that call of love and mercy through complete surrender of everything I have and am. Saints like Margaret, Claude, and (hopefully) Dolindo, lived heroic lives of courage by allowing their suffering to be offered up to Christ as they gave over their entire lives the moment they met His Heart’s gaze. I can only pray to emulate their courage with my own little offerings.

Talk to you soon,

Ryleigh

1. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/20241024-enciclica-dilexit-nos.html#_ftnref, 39.

2. Elena Bosetti, Matthew: The Journey Toward Hope, (Pauline Books & Media: 2006), 84, 84-85, 86.

3. https://www.tektonministries.org/a-saints-saintly-friend/

4. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/20241024-enciclica-dilexit-nos.html#_ftnref, 109, 126.