Change my heart O Lord

The Holy Spirit is at work in you. He wants to change you, to give you a better life. Love changes everything. Change my heart, O Lord. We live and act with the Heart of Christ. Sir Philip Sydney, thinking of a couple who say: We have given our hearts to each other. Your heart and mine are one. has written:

My true love hath my heart and I have his,
By just exchange one for another given;
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven,
My true love hath my heart and I have his.

We can apply the poem to our new relationship with Jesus, for this is the exchange, the Holy Spirit wishes for each of us in the course of meditation. At the heart of each mystery and each Hail Mary is the heart and the name of Jesus. Christ is not simply an object of external veneration. We take him to ourselves and receive the wondrous exchange of his own heart in return.

Meditation such as we find in the Rosary, does not end in darkness and emptiness. It is a journey towards the hearts of Jesus and Mary. It is not simply a matter of mental prayer, but an exchange of hearts, where we live in the Sacred Heart of the Beloved.

I am think that this is the difference between Eastern meditation which seems to end in the void, and the Christian type of contemplative prayer which enters the void indeed, but somehow goes beyond it. Christian prayer like the Rosary, never forgets that the source and the summit of all yearning is the union of hearts, the mystical marriage of two persons. We are the Bride and all our longing is for union with the Bridegroom. While we may wait with eager and lonely expectation, we never forget that the the Lover is coming to meet us.

“Arise make haste, my love my dove...
Let me see you face and hear your voice.”

This is why I can ask with complete confidence for my personal needs or can intercede with boldness for others. The Bridegroom cannot refuse to listen to my voice or turn away from my face?