Compunction is a deep, grace-filled sorrow for sin that pierces the heart leading to repentance and healing. The word is derived from the Latin for “to prick hard” and is a grace that flows from love of God.  This deep sorrow is rooted in a profound awareness that it is sin that keeps us from God’s incredible love. It elicits an ache over the distance sin puts between us and the One we love, because we want nothing more than to have all barriers between Him and us removed.

As we continue our Lenten journey, I encourage you to pray for the grace of compunction. May love for God so consume you that your soul is pierced by an aching desire to never have sin separate you from the One who loves you more than you can imagine.

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Around the same time that I encountered Yasutaro’s imprisonment, I heard a talk about the cross and the speaker spoke of Jesus choosing to be pinned to the cross.

In the hours before he breathed his last and surrendered his very life, not only did he experience excruciating agony, he also experienced being trapped, immobilized by the piercing nails. Jesus chose to be pinned to the cross because it was the remedy for sin, which imprisons and enslaves humanity. If we remain in sin, we will be trapped for all eternity in a prison worse than our wildest imaginings.

I’m overwhelmed by Yasutaro’s witness. He knew that turning his back on the one who died to free him from the everlasting prison of hell meant a far worse fate than being locked in a torturously small cage. Jesus is the all-powerful God of the universe, and no one could have kept him on the cross if he had decided to come down, but he didn’t. He chose to be there for you and for me. As we begin this new year, let’s resolve to flee from the enslavement of sin and its eternal trap and embrace the freedom Jesus offers.

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Soon after, I joined the choir, and we began to rehearse Duruflé’s Requiem and I hated it. I didn’t like how it sounded, how hard it was, or singing second soprano for the first time. I seriously doubted if I could sufficiently learn the challenging music. But oh-so-slowly, as the fifty-voice chorus learned their intricate, interweaving parts during long hours of effort, I began to love the music we were creating. I’ll never forget the evening we packed too many musicians into the cathedral loft and brought this piece to life with our voices. It was ethereal. Attendees said it was like glimpsing heaven.

It struck me so deeply that this was completely impossible for one to accomplish on their own. At times the music breaks into seven parts, so it isn’t even possible with a small choir. You need a large choir that is also willing to work hard to accomplish something together. No matter how much I may desire to recreate that beauty, it is impossible without others.

This is such a helpful analogy for us as members of the Body of Christ! We need each other. We cannot do it alone, and our effort matters. We are members of one body in Christ and like a choir, we are the most beautiful, inviting, and effective when we each do our part with excellence contributing to the Church’s collective effort to reveal God’s love and mercy to those in darkness. However, we are at our worst when we don’t learn our part and boldly sing wrong and discordant notes that mar our witness, sow disunity, and confuse and weaken our proclamation of the Gospel.

The world needs the Body of Christ to pull it back from its death-bound trajectory! In that pursuit, we each have a responsibility to build up the body by forming our hearts and minds in truth (even when it is hard!) and generously offering our unique, God-given gifts for the good of all. We each have a responsibility to repent of sin and restore beauty to the body when it has been lost. Because together as members of the Church, we are the “bearer of divine life” and Christ’s “instrument for the salvation of all” (CCC 770, 776).

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In Scripture we find reminders that God comforts those who mourn, is close to the brokenhearted, and promises eventual triumph over sorrow. And in Romans 12 when St. Paul gives counsel about what it means to be a Christian, he talks about attractive things like having genuine love and brotherly affection, rejoicing in hope, being hospitable, and being aglow with the Spirit, but he also counsels blessing persecutors and weeping with those who weep.

In the same chapter, he also speaks about the Church as one body in Christ, integrally part of one another. When it comes to the Body of Christ, we cannot dismember ourselves, excising the body’s members, without harming the whole. And likewise, we can’t choose just to “rejoice in hope” but ignore the call to “weep with those who weep.”

These marks of a Christian that St. Paul lays out are qualities that knit us together as a community, deepen bonds, and infuse our deepest identity. We are being woven together like a complex tapestry, and that weaving involves bright, beautiful colors and the piercing of a needle. Some indispensable part of being knit together in love involves piercing sorrow, and the more we bear each other’s sorrows, the more we are bound together in love.

This side of heaven, we will all face grief; it cannot be avoided. But somehow, our good God has woven great love into great tragedy. Not only in the consummation of his perfect love through the sorrow of the cross, but also by knitting his children together into one body, one community of love that bears one another’s burdens.

Should you too find yourself observing grief, look too for love. I promise it is there.

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When we look upon the image of the Sacred Heart, we see a heart split open by Longinus’ lance, encircled by piercing thorns, impaled by the wood of the cross, and bursting with flames.

The Sacred Heart is a visual declaration of Jesus’ burning love for you and me. Every laceration, every deathly wound, was endured for love of us.

When Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, he spoke of his overflowing love for humanity, whose response is coldness, ingratitude, and contempt. He said, “I feel this more than all that I suffered during my passion. If only they would make me some return for my love.”

When Jesus took on human flesh to suffer and die, it was for a rescue mission. He carried the crushing burden of his cross up the hill of Calvary to rescue his beloved; He offered his heart to be pierced to save her life. He aches for her to respond in love.

When I first prayed The Liturgy of the Hours, I was arrested by its translation of Proverbs 31:11: “Her husband, entrusting his heart to her, has an unfailing prize.” In some depictions of the Sacred Heart, Jesus holds his heart in his hand, extending it in offering to us. The Church is the Bride of Christ, and Jesus the Bridegroom entrusts his heart to us.

But there is more! The husband of Proverbs 31 has an unfailing prize in the spouse who receives his heart. Today, let’s enter into that stunning mystery. Let’s make a return for his love. Let’s receive his heart.

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