The Heart That Is Always Watching

We have often constructed interiorly an arresting scene: the ominous sky, the wild winds, a little boat tossed by the seething waves of Lake Tiberias, with Jesus asleep in the stern.  What a contrast between the fury of the tempest and the sweet, majestic peace of the divine slumber!

What would the sleeping Jesus be like?  St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus states that children please their parents just as well asleep as awake.  To souls enamored of Jesus, the Beloved is as beautiful in the silence of his sleep as in the zenith of his activity…. Mary most holy must have watched the sleep of Jesus many times….

The Apostles, with their narrow, human judgment, because they had not yet received from the Paraclete the deep sense of the divine, did not suspect on Tiberias the mystery of that Heart which was always watching.  Frightened by the din of the storm, they awakened Jesus to command the winds and the tempest…. Like the Apostles, souls want to awaken Jesus when the storm threatens.  What will they do without him?  Passions that seem conquered rise with new vigor.  A darkness like that of death covers the sky of the soul, once a bright blue.  The whistling of a hurricane disturbs the soul with gloomy, desolate, despairing ideas that seem to come out of hell…. "Master," the soul cries to him, "do you not care if we perish?"

Just as it was unnecessary to awaken Jesus on Tiberias, it is unnecessary that he be awake in souls to give them life.  The words of the Song of Solomon (5:2) may be ­applied to his mystical sleep: I sleep, but my heart watches.  Yes, Jesus watches solicitously in souls that love, even though they feel that he has abandoned them.  Love does not abandon.  Jesus is there in the depth of the soul.  He seems to sleep because the soul does not hear his refreshing voice, because it does not enjoy his consolations.  But the Heart of Jesus is always watching with his inextinguishable love, with his incessant actions, with his tender care more solicitous each day.