A Burning Heart

REV. MR. JOSH HILL ’23, DIOCESE OF BISMARCK

While on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I had the opportunity to spend the night in prayer inside Jerusalem’s wonderous Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which is the church built over the top of Calvary and Christ’s tomb. There were six of us pilgrims in total, each from a different part of the world but unified by our faith in the one Risen Lord. After the doors were locked and we were committed to a night of prayer and keeping vigil (Luke 22:40), I immersed myself in the Gospel accounts of Christ’s passion, journeying from chapel to chapel and room to room, from Mount Calvary to the tomb. I found myself alone with our Lord, kneeling right beside his empty tomb, reverently housed inside an ornately constructed Edicule that marks the central mystery of our Christian Faith—the resurrection. For two hours I remained present there, overwhelmed with gratitude for such a gifted experience.

However, despite such a once-in-a-lifetime moment, I found myself a bit unsatisfied, as if this wonderful experience which I was drinking in couldn’t quench my thirst. “How could I not be satisfied with such a wonderful gift?! Am I not as grateful as I thought? Lord, what is the reason for this hunger that is increasingly being manifested in my heart?”

No sooner did my heart finish its cry for help than it heard the voice from the risen Prince of Peace say, “My beloved, this is just my empty tomb. Why do you seek the living among the dead? (Luke 24:5).” With his answer came not just the thirst-quenching satisfaction of my heart’s divinely inspired hunger, but also a simultaneous desire for the Eucharist, the intensity of which was both immensely joyful and painful. After a few hours of this joyfully painful and painfully joyful desire, I was able to attend Mass and receive the Eucharist, at which point I joyfully said to myself as Jesus “vanished out of sight…did not (my) heart burn within (me) while he spoke to (me) along the way?” (Luke 24:31-32).

Life in seminary at the North American College flows from the heart of our community’s morning Mass and pulsates throughout our daily schedule. While we find our rhythm and harmony from the various times in which we come together for the Liturgy of the Hours, we also have a special opportunity for silent prayer and adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. This intimate time to remain with our risen Lord is an oasis in the desert for the one whose soul thirsts for the living God, and whose desire burns to see his face (Psalm 42).

As the heart’s one true desire throughout the pilgrimage of this life, the Eucharist has been my daily bread for the journey, especially throughout seminary. I can see looking back with faith how my heart was burning for it along the way (Luke 24); and with that same faith now looking forward to what lies ahead, I see that our Lord continues to walk with me. Every moment of silent prayer before the Blessed Sacrament or in the solitude of my inner room is a moment in which I can, again and again, remain alone with him. However, in every such moment of encounter, the desire of the heart is at once satisfied and enflamed with a deeper hunger. As this satisfying hunger grows, I feel myself compelled more and more to go out and share with others “what had happened on the way, and how He (is) known in the breaking of the bread” (Luke 24:35).