Change Our Hearts

In 2020 the Covid pandemic was raging, and social distancing had become a way of life. As those months of staying at home wore on, I found myself cleaning out closets and clearing some of the junk out of my junk drawer just to keep busy. One day I came across a box I hadn’t opened in a long time. It contained an assortment of greeting cards and newspaper clippings, pictures that never made it into an album, and notes from old friends. I also found in it a short reflection I wrote nearly 20 years ago. I wrote it at the request of the new music minister who had come to our parish the year before. She had introduced a lot of new hymns over the course of her first year with us, and she wanted the members of the choir to write down their thoughts on any one of the new songs that they found especially meaningful. I didn’t have to think twice. For me, the song was, “Change Our Hearts” by Rory Cooney. This is what I wrote:

The song is called “Change Our Hearts,” and we sang it for the first time on Ash Wednesday last year.

“Change our hearts this time,
Your word says it can be.
Change our minds this time,
Your life could make us free.
We are the people Your call set apart,
Lord, this time, change our hearts.”

It’s all about renewal, starting again, what my mother used to call “turning over a new leaf.” I can’t count the number of times in my life I’ve done that, or at least tried. But the song says, “this time.” The words stick in my throat. I’ve tried before; we’ve all tried before. During Advent when we think, this time, it will be less about the coming of Christmas and more about the coming of Christ. Or during Lent when we hope that, this time, our fasting and penance will cause real change, real growth. Too often, the change doesn’t go deep enough. It has to reach all the way down into our hearts if it’s going to stand up to the pressures and distractions of living each day.

But we don’t have to wait for Christmas or Easter to come again before we turn over that new leaf. We have the opportunity to ask God to “change our hearts” every time we walk through the church doors, every time we approach the foot of the cross in prayer, every time we receive the Eucharist. We simply have to pause there, in His presence, and ask Him to help us, “Lord, this time, change our hearts.”

Thanks, Mom.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (John 14:27)