As we continue through Delexit nos, this new section is striking. Pope Francis begins paragraph 9 calling the world we live in liquid. The liquid world has made us consumers that have made us loose the path to an interior life.

As a communion of people we are a communion of persons. We find strength, conviction, passion, and make decisions as a communion of people.

In this liquid world, we need a return to the heart. Pope Francis notes in paragraph 11:

If we devalue the heart, we also devalue what it means to speak from the heart, to act with the heart, to cultivate and heal the heart. If we fail to appreciate the specificity of the heart, we miss the messages that the mind alone cannot communicate; we miss out on the richness of our encounters with others; we miss out on poetry. We also lose track of history and our own past, since our real personal history is built with the heart. At the end of our lives, that alone will matter.

He goes on to say that the heart tends to the greater good. We are people moved to the power of love. The pope points out that any pursuit begins with an inner stirring. He gives us the image of goose bumps. That which helps us to stir our imagination and move us to deep emotion is the heart.

A fitting read on this day. Today, I celebrate my 41st birthday and it definitely is a matter of the heart. The pope is right. We live in a liquid world where everything will fade, evolve, and change. There is only one constant: love rooted in relationship. For my lived experience, I know this to be the family. Everything else will pass in life. The love nurtured and cherished within a family will be the one thing we carry into the eternity. This is our “personal history.” This is our poetry. We carry it in the heart.