The Beat of a Heart…

The human heart is an amazing thing. It begins beating about 22 days after you are conceived and will continue beating until you die. Most of us believe that it can occasionally stop beating and be restarted with paddles, but I’ve heard doctors say that if it ever stops – it’s stopped forever. It beats in children as fast as 140 times per minute and gradually slows down as you get older until you reach about 60-80 as an adult. That means if you assume that you start with a heart rate of 140 and that declines by 5 beats per minute each year until you reach age 16 (it will be 65 at this point) it would have beat over a million times in your first year of life. By the time you are 19, this number would exceed a billion. When you reach age 33, the age Jesus was when he died, assuming a steady heart rate as stated above, your heart would have beat over 1.5 billion times.

My thoughts this morning were on that Heart which beat over 1.5 billion times. That Sacred Heart which loved us so much that it drove Him to endure such punishments that no ordinary man could have survived, only to be hung on a cross. That Heart which ached in Gethsemane, which forgave on Calvary, and which longs for us now. Each of those 1.5 billion beats was significant – each one was for me. Each drop of blood that a beat sent through his arteries could have been enough by itself for the salvation of the world, but since He is God, He couldn’t just give “enough” – He had to do things perfectly. So He was hung on a cross where His most Sacred Heart stopped beating. It was pierced with a lance. Then they laid Him in the tomb – His heart lying as still as His bruised and battered body. It stayed that way from Friday evening until early Sunday morning.

Imagine being able to see this Sacred Heart lying there completely still, totally motionless. But then, it beats once. A brief pause, but then it beats again. It continues to pick up its frequency until it is beating about once per second. The Heart continues beating and eventually the hands begin to tighten. Then His eyes open and His lungs gasp for air. This body that was dead – inanimate – no longer living is now beginning to breathe, beginning to move. Perhaps He coughed as I’m sure His throat was dry. He sat up and removed the cloth from His face and body. About this time, He looked up the stairs and saw the Angel standing where the stone had been.

We all know the story from there, but meditating on that first heart beat of the resurrection just gives me chills – it is incredible... With one little beat of the Heart, our Savior was risen. With one heart beat, Jesus had beat Satan, beat death! With one beat of that heart, salvation for us all had been achieved and the netherworld will never prevail.

I know Good Friday isn’t the most appropriate time to Blog about the resurrection, but I wanted to share my thoughts. Now, I’m back to my mission.