Unlock your heart.
Christ has risen from the dead trampling down death by death
And upon those in the tomb, bestowing life. Amen.
This will be the one novel that you will read in your desert island of a dorm room this summer in my class. With that our French Professor Sister Marie- Helene, showed us the child’s version of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.
My favorite character in Les Mis was Bishop Myrick. He is a minor character—only featured in maybe the first 50 pages or so. He became a Bishop by a chance encounter. When his priests are too sick to visit prisoners facing the guillotine, the bishop visits with those facing execution. Bishop Myrick lives with his doors unlocked in his palace prior to the French Revolution:
Not a single door of the Bishop’s palace could be locked all ironwork had been removed much to the chagrin of the servants living in his household. The doors were never fastened and almost all fine things had been sold off, the palace converted to a hospital. Now there was still silver for dining 6 forks knives and spoons and candlesticks for the table.
Doors unlocked. Without fear!
Not a single door was ever locked at the bishop’s palace! As I slowly painfully read Les Miserables with my primitive French, I fell in love with the bishop.
Doors unlocked! This struck me as so cool. I wanted to be fearless like Bishop Myrick, I told Sister Marie Helene in class one day. So idealistic with my head in the clouds was I!
“You live in Newark, young lady no?”
“Oui, Soeur Marie.” I answered.
Now, as an aside, I will tell you—in case you don’t know Newark New Jersey is neither safe nor lovely. Bishop Myrick in Pre-Revolutionary Paris was probably safer!
Sister then said something along the lines of: Débloque ton Coeur, mais l’amour de dieu --verrouille ta porte !
Which translated means: Unlock your heart but for love of God, lock your door!
Everyone in the classroom laughed uproariously.
Unlock your heart, that is how holy people live—with unlocked hearts.
Unlock your heart.
In Les Mis, the Protagonist, Jean Valjean a thief and brutish man happens by chance to the door of the bishop’s palace looking for food and work… and maybe … something nefarious. Valjean takes off with almost all the silver from the bishop’s palace only to be caught by the police and brought back to Bishop Myrick. “Jean Valjean,” bishop Myrick greets him as he is brought back, “You forgot the candlesticks—you foolish man. I’m glad to see you returned for them. Here--take them too.” The police and Valjean in astonishment look on as the bishop hands over to this ruffian of a man the last riches of the bishop’s palace.
I remember that I stopped reading on my desert island of a dorm room for a really long time. I re-read that line again and again. Astonished and moved that someone would do something so… selfless and kind. I poured over the story moved to tears.
Jean Valjean was trembling in every limb. He took the two candlesticks mechanically, and with a bewildered air.
“Now,” said the Bishop, “go in peace. By the way, when you return, my friend, it is not necessary to pass through the garden. You can always enter and depart through the street door. It is never fastened with anything but a latch, either by day or by night.”
Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you with candlesticks; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.”
I read that little section of Les Mis over and over in my primitive French because it was just so
Astonishingly beautiful.
I wanted that for my life.
Unlock your heart.
It is those first 50 pages and that minor character that shape the rest of the life of Valjean. He is changed by a chance encounter with someone who is astonishingly kind and unlocks his heart.
The doors were locked that day when Jesus surprised the disciples and changed them from fearful men into kind men. He unlocked their hearts without having to unlock the door. I imagine that the disciples were as astonished to see Christ amongst them alive. Alive!
I imagine their hearts unlocked-- weeping trembling in astonishment like Valjean in Les Mis or a reader transformed by the beauty of Hugo’s vision of justice and love.
We unlock other people’s hearts with astonishing kindness beauty and chance encounters. Being a holy person means we set ourselves to being a minor character in the Paschal mystery--- reconcilers in the world. We unlock people’s hearts.
How different the world is because of the disciples who held all things in common and gave away their lives in astonishing ways. How different the world is because of Jesus who trampled down death and raises up to unlock hearts in astonishing ways too.
Do we believe that reconciliation is possible, that hearts can be unlocked, that God’s astonishing dream can overcome the nightmare that has taken hold of our world right now?
The world was gripped in a grim nightmare in the time of the disciples, in the time of Victor Hugo and in our time as well.
The work of reconciliation is about imagining what it means to unlock the hearts of fearfulness and hate so that all can be transformed—even in the smallest of acts—giving away candlesticks… reading a novel, creating holy laughter. For the love of God, lock your door…
So where do we begin?
Unlocking our hearts begins in prayer. What I did not know that summer reading and rereading Les Mis was that I was dancing along the edges of Holy Reading and Prayer—something called-- Lectio Divina. Reading and rereading literature and pondering it, chewing it, thinking on it—ruminating. God was unlocking my heart, getting me ready to learn how to pray with Scripture later on.
Sister Joan Chittister reflects on prayer this way, “Our ability to pray depends on the power and the place of God in our lives. We come to pray because God attracts us to pray, and we pray only because God is attracting us. We are not, in other words the author of our own prayer lives, but by God’s goodness we pray.” Our hearts unlock when we see and know kindness and beauty and in through others.
There’s a wonderful story from the desert mothers-- the disciples of Amma Agateha came to her and asked Amma what is the greatest virtue that requires the greatest effort?
She tells them that,
There is no labor greater than prayer. For every time we want to pray, our enemies, demons and all the powers of hell want to prevent us from praying for they know that it is only by turning us from prayer that they can hinder our journey. Whatever good work a person undertakes, if they persevere in it, they will attain rest. However, prayer Amma Agateha told her students, prayer is warfare to the last breath of our lives.
For prayer unlocks our hearts and teaches us our place in Christ’s kingdom & the cosmos. For Christ is the at the very of heart of the Universe.
Prayer reminds us that we no longer belong to evil, but to good. That our souls much like Valjean’s, was bought for us from a spirit of perdition and given to God.”
We come to the work of astonishing acts of kindness through chance encounters, we take up prayer and remember our place in Christ’s cosmos, our work of unlocking hearts.
Sister Marie Helene was right: Débloque ton coeur
Unlock your heart. Amen.