Where Is Your Heart Planted?

Voice over by Eliz

Jer 17:5-10, Psalm: 1, Lk 16:19-31

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

The Word of God today presents us with a profound and urgent choice: where do we place our ultimate trust? What is the true source of our life?

Through the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord declares a stark blessing and a warning. The one who trusts in human strength alone, whose heart turns from God, is like a barren bush in the desert. But the one who trusts in the Lord is “like a tree planted beside the waters… its leaves stay green.” This is not merely about occasional piety, but about the deep, hidden orientation of the heart. Jeremiah reveals God’s sobering truth: “More tortuous than all else is the human heart.” Our own self-assessment is often flawed; only God sees and judges with mercy and truth.

This piercing diagnosis of the heart is dramatized in Christ’s parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man is the very image of Jeremiah’s “barren bush.” His trust is in his wealth and fine garments. He is spiritually arid, disconnected from the living waters of compassion. He does not actively torment Lazarus; his damnation lies in his neglect, in his failure to see, to bend down, and to serve the suffering brother at his gate. Lazarus, meanwhile, in his radical poverty and trust, is mysteriously close to the heart of God, carried by angels to Abraham’s bosom.

The chasm fixed in the afterlife is simply the eternal ratification of a chasm the rich man already chose in this life—the chasm of a closed heart. As Pope Francis tirelessly reminds us, “The poor are not a problem; they are a resource from which to draw… to embrace the mind of Jesus Christ.” The rich man failed to draw from this resource of grace.

What, then, is our comfort and strength? First, in the mercy of God who searches our hearts. He gives us this Lenten season as a time for honest examination. Where is my trust truly rooted? In my savings, my status, my plans—or in the provident love of my Father?

Second, our strength is in the concrete command of love. The parable shows us that the Law and the Prophets—summarized perfectly by Christ in love of God and neighbor—are sufficient for our conversion. We need not wait for dramatic signs. Saint Augustine urges us: “Find your delight in the Lord; he will give you your heart’s desire.” When our delight is in Him, our heart’s desire becomes conformed to His: seeing and serving Christ in the poor, the lonely, the forgotten.

Let us therefore plant our hearts firmly beside the living waters of grace—in prayer, in the Sacraments, and in concrete charity. Let us examine the “gates” of our own lives, our homes and routines, and ask: Who is invisible to me? Who is my Lazarus?

Dear Brothers and sisters, the choice is ours. Will we be the barren bush, trusting in what withers, or the tree whose leaves are green, whose trust in God bears fruit in works of mercy? Let us choose life. Let us choose the open heart. For our heart, united to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, is the wellspring of eternal life. Amen.

May God bless you all!