“Why do we need a heart?”
our Developmental Anatomy professor prompted us. Someone from the front row peeped, “love!” Love would not be the focus of his lecture, but this was a refreshing answer to the question. There is of course a strong association between love and the heart. In the Catholic faith, there are even different devotions to hearts: the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Most Chaste Heart of St. Joseph. What is it about this organ that has inspired so many powerful prayers and symbols? Reflecting on the anatomy and physiology of the heart provides some insight.
In a way, our heart development reveals our origin story. The heart is the first organ to become functional, efficiently pumping even before we have fully completed our embryological development. We can think of love, too, as the beginning of ourselves. Even before God created the world, even before He formed us in the womb, He knew us, chose us, loved us (Ephesians 1:4, Jeremiah 1:5). This Love gives us life: “Love between the Father and the Son, the love that the Father and Son have experienced for all eternity, is so real, so powerful, that it’s actually a third Person. It’s the third Person of the Trinity; it’s the Holy Spirit.”1 The Holy Spirit has many names: “the Creator Spirit”, “the source of every good”, “the giver of life”, and finally, “Love”.2 And so, as the heart sustains us throughout development, working in us even before we are conscious of it, so too the Love of God.
This love is then meant to be shared: “God who created man out of love also calls him to love – the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.”3 The cardiac cycle models this simple system of receiving and giving love. Now imagine blood as God’s love, and ourselves as the ventricles of the heart. This heart chamber fills with blood during ventricular diastole (relaxation), then actively pumps that blood out of the heart during ventricular systole (contraction). Just as ventricular heart muscles relax in order to fill with blood, we don’t need to do anything in order to receive the love of the Father. God freely gives us this divine love, fully knowing all our faults and weaknesses, and loving us through the pain our sin brings Him. God’s love is not earned by any action on our end; in a state like diastole, we simply allow His love to pour in and fill us up. It is then up to us to actively direct this love we have received toward those around us, just as the heart must pump the blood it has received to the rest of the body for the completion of one cardiac cycle.
The heart’s anatomy also serves as an interesting subject to meditate on during visual forms of prayer. Observing the exterior of the heart, I first notice the band of coronary arteries encircling the organ to supply it with blood. Just as the heart must supply itself with blood in order to supply the rest of the body, so too must we give ourselves love if we wish to give love to others. Now peering beyond the muscular exterior of the heart and into its chambers (the atria and ventricles), I see structures that appear much more delicate. Thin valve leaflets separate the atria and ventricles. Slender bands called chordae tendineae then tether these leaflets to papillary muscles, which insert onto the ventricular wall. These three components (valve leaflets, chordae tendineae, and papillary muscles) together compose a valve structure, which collapses open and shuts closed to control the flow of blood movement throughout the cardiac cycle.
The chordae tendinea, only 0.36 mm – 1.95 mm in diameter in the human heart4, have the strength to endure the powerful, recurring forces from the rapid movement of blood flowing through the heart chambers during each cardiac cycle. Waves of collagen filaments enveloped by elastic fibers achieve this strength.5 As these wavy filaments stretch and elongate, forces then efficiently transfer from the chordae to the leaflets.5 In effect, this deceptively durable valve holds up against the strong forces experienced during systolic contractions. This valve is one small but irreplaceable component of an organ so powerful it can pump blood 2 meters up a giraffe’s neck against gravity, requiring a blood pressure twice as high as humans (280/180 mmHg);6 an organ so efficient it can pump 240 L – 350 L of blood throughout a thoroughbred horse’s body per minute at racing speed;7 an organ so mighty it can beat 1093 – 1511 times per minute in an Etruscan shrew.8
If we are to allow the love of God to flow into us and out to others, perhaps some parts of our character need to model this valve structure. Serving others with a humble and forgiving heart may appear as weakness, though sacrificial love demands an interior strength. Like the heart valve, the power of God has been described as appearing weak:
“… the power of God looks like weakness; and weakness – not the weakness of ineffectiveness but the weakness of love – is our best picture of the power of God… the power of God is the power of love.” 9
This “weakness of love” may otherwise be described as vulnerability, a susceptibility to being hurt. For Christ, this meant taking on the full weight and pain of the sins of the world; ultimately, it meant sacrificing His life to redeem us. In an earthly sense, His death may first appear as weakness, but we know that from this act of love came power strong enough to conquer death. The “weakness of love” can mean dying to oneself for the sake of another, taking on pain with confidence in the Father’s ability to heal and rebuild, accepting human weakness to instead rely on the strength of Christ. After all, Jesus tells us, “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness’”(2 Cor 12:9).
With such an astounding anatomy and physiology as the heart has, it fits that this integral organ symbolizes such a powerful force as love. Both give us life, both involve receiving and giving, both have a power perhaps concealed by the appearance of weakness. A song that guides me through this meditation is called “Here’s my heart, Lord.” What does it mean to you to offer your heart to the Lord? What is your answer to, “Why do we need a heart?”?
Some wisdom from Fr. Herbert McCabe to reflect on:
“If we serve God, we are recognizing that what matters first is what we receive and not what we do or make. What matters first is that we are loved. And this we have before anything we deserve or achieve. To understand this is to understand that it is not only our deeds and our works that matter, but that we matter ourselves. We matter, not first because of what we have made of ourselves, but because of what God has made of us. And that includes what we make of ourselves. To serve God is to stop congratulating ourselves and to begin to love ourselves: to love ourselves as God loves us: not for being rich or clever or powerful, but just for being ourselves. And when we know God’s love for us, and when we can love ourselves, then we can share in God’s love for others. Unless we serve God, unless we thank him for our being, unless we love ourselves, whatever we do for others will not be love.” 10
In keeping with the theme of hearts, I will leave you with my favorite prayer from a saint with an incorrupt heart, St. John Vianney:
References:
- Schmitz, Mike. 05/31/20 Exiles: the first gift. Produced by UMD Newman Catholic Campus Ministry . Available at: https://bulldogcatholic.org/2020/05/31/05-31-20-exiles-the-gift/. Accessed Jan 7, 2021.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 291 (Missouri: Liguori, 1994), 2006.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1604 (Missouri: Liguori, 1994), 2006.
- Chen S, Sari CR, Gao H, LeiY, Segers P, De Beule M, Wang G, Ma. Mechanical and morphometric study of mitral valve chordae tendineae and related papillary muscle. J Mech Behav Biomed Mater 2020;111:104011.
- Ritchie J, Warnock JN, and Yoganathan AP. Structural characterization of the chordae tendineae in native porcine mitral valves. Ann Thorac Surg 2005;80:189–97.
- Giraffe Conservation Foundation. Giraffe facts. Available at: https://giraffeconservation.org/facts/how-big-is-a-giraffes-heart/. Accessed Jan 6, 2021.
- Firshman, Anna. Heart rate and respirator rate response to exercise in horses (Proceedings). Oct 31, 2010. Available at: https://www.dvm360.com/view/heart-rate-and-respirator-rate-response-exercise-horses-proceedings. Accessed Jan 6, 2021.
- Jürgens KD, Fons R, Peters T, Sender S. Heart and respiratory rates and their significance for convective oxygen transport rates in the smallest mammal, the Etruscan shrew Suncus etruscus. J Exp Biol 1996;199:2579–2584.
- McCabe, Herbert. (1987). God Matters (pp. 108). New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group.
- McCabe, Herbert. (2005). God, Christ and Us (pp. 136). New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic.