There are essentially two ways in which human beings can witness their surroundings: through their eyes and through their heart. Seeing the world through our eyes makes the most sense; after all, this is exactly how the world around us presents itself to us. Through our eyes, we get to see the world at face-value. This aspect of the world is sensual and surface-level, but it is a very temporal way of witnessing our surroundings. Although we are in this world, we are not of this world; we have been given the gift of discernment by also gazing at the world through our hearts. Our hearts are the instrument that our spirits and our souls use to connect to the physical reality of ourselves and our world. When God desires to communicate with us, he accesses our hearts, not our ears. What is it about the heart that gives us the ability to unify the spiritual and corporeal worlds?

Our hearts are very much an interior aspect of ourselves, whereas our eyes (and the other sense organs for that matter) are exterior. God’s creativity and design is unique in that the fastest way to understand what is actually true in this world is by listening first to our interior self rather than focusing on the exterior world. This is also what distinguishes us from other animals; because we do not know things exclusively based on our senses, we are capable of communicating directly with God to know and understand how to treat the rest of His creation. The minute we begin to shut out our interior being, ignore our interior voice, or focus exclusively on the corporeal and external, we will immediately become more animalistic. We become selfish and carnal, caring only about our self-preservation and our own survival. We lose our humanity when we do not listen to our hearts. We lose our communication with God. The purpose of having a heart to listen to is so that we might be able to appreciate what exists around us while orienting it all back to God. 

A great example of unifying our hearts with the exterior world is our relationships on earth. None of the relationships we establish in this life will be carried over to the next; our fathers and mothers, our brothers and sisters, our friends and spouses will all be merely participants in the resurrection alongside us. They most certainly will not be the recipients of our energy or our attention as they are in this world. But that does not mean we stop seeking relationships with others; on the contrary, we are called to listen to our hearts so that we may be guided in how to foster strong communication in our relationships. The physical world can only be sanctified if we work to nurture it through the care and love that originates from the spiritual life. There is no better way to sanctify the world than through the collaborative efforts of human relationship. It is through the heart that we see the meaning and value of others. It is through others that we work for common goals and have shared values. It is our common goals and shared values that make us care for God’s creation in this world. While it may be harsh when Jesus seemingly dismisses his “mother and brothers” in the Gospel, he is giving us a valuable lesson that our relationships are merely instruments to do the will of God in this world. By doing so, we enable all of us to focus exclusively on God when the time comes for us to pass on to a spiritual existence.