“Why do I feel this way?” “Why am I so restless just now?” “Why am I angry at this person when I should feel love?” “Why am I so tense at this meeting?” “Why do I feel this jealousy, coldness, bitterness, or obsession?” Fr. Rolheiser writes that these questions emanate from the heart. The heart has its reasons, and we’re not always privy to them. We feel a little threatened, and doors that were once wide open inside of us begin to close. We feel the need to protect ourselves, to reclaim ourselves from someone, to be calm, aloof, disinterested, and seemingly given over to more important things. Where just minutes before, there was warmth, vulnerability, softness, trust, and the desire to share, there is now a chill, a hardness, a distrust, and a reluctance to share anything beyond the surface. There’s a biblical name for this, “hardness of heart.” Jesus teaches in his comments on divorce how this hardness profoundly affects our lives. The bitter realities of our world and how those realities harden our hearts and render it impossible at times for us not to have our relationships unravel. What Jesus does in this teaching is invite us to go back, back to the beginning, back to pre-fallen times, back to that time before our hearts began to harden, back to when we were still childlike, and, from there, to try to answer for ourselves how God feels about the fracturing of any relationship. Not an easy thing. And therein lies one of the biggest moral struggles within our lives: To keep a mellow, warm, trusting heart. For the most part, as we know, we’re not there, none of us. We’re still too often defensive, cool, self-protecting, and prone to all the subtle negative behaviors this triggers. But it’s good to recognize that this is a broken place, a humble place, and a place from which we are invited, each day, to make a new beginning.