Lift Up Your Hearts

The voice of him who speaks in love, where is it directed?  To the "dative of manifestation," the one who can hear?  Ultimately to God, source of speaker and hearer.   Out of gratitude and in love the voice speaks, to the Speaker of the Word, out of Whom the voice is knit.

Sursum Corda.  Lift up your hearts!  Here is the meditation of Heinrich Suso  (1300? - 1366) on this opening of the Eucharistic prayer, which Ford Maddox Ford called "the most beautiful passage of Christian mysticism." The Limits of Art, at 391-392.

I place before my inward eyes myself with all that I am -- my body, soul, and all my powers -- and I gather round me all the creatures which God ever created in heaven, on earth, and in all the elements, each one severally with its name, whether birds of the air, beasts of the forest, fishes of the water, leaves and grass of the earth, or the innumerable sand of the sea, and to these I add all the little specks of dust which glance in the sunbeams, with all the little drops of water which ever fell or are falling from dew, snow, or rain, and I wish that each of these had a sweetly-sounding stringed instrument, fashioned from my heart's inmost blood, striking on which they might each send up to our dear and gentle God a new and lofty strain of praise for ever and ever.  And then the loving arms of my soul stretch out and extend themselves towards the innumerable multitude of all creatures, and my intention is, just as a free and blithesome leader of a choir stirs up the singers of his company, even so to turn them all to good account by inciting them to sing joyously, and to offer up their hearts to God. "Sursum corda."

If stones can speak, let my own voice rise in love to Him in whom in Love all things are made.