Sursum Corda – Lift up your Hearts

At the beginning of the Eucharistic liturgy at Holy Mass, the priest invites everyone to lift up their hearts to God. In Latin “sursum corda”, hearts up high. And our response is: “We lift them to the Lord”. This is an important moment, because we raise our hearts to Heaven, so that we can also participate in some way in the heavenly liturgy, because at Holy Mass the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross is renewed in the presence of the angels and saints, so it's as if Heaven were there with us.

This call to lift up our hearts to God should not be restricted to the moment of the Eucharistic liturgy. The saints, those who learned to live united to God while still here on earth, always had their hearts in heaven. That's why St. Paul could say: “For to me life is Christ, and death is gain” (Phil 1:21). He was so united to Jesus and to the supernatural world that he saw the moment of his death as a gain, because he would be able to contemplate the face of God eternally.

The meaning of the “sursum corda”

So what does “sursum corda” mean? A few people are called to live this out in a radical way, abandoning the things of this world and living cloistered or isolated, only worshipping and serving God with this renunciation of material things. In this way, their hearts and minds are exclusively in heaven.

How to live the “sursum corda”

However, the vast majority of us are called to live the “sursum corda” in the midst of our daily lives. To live in the world, without neglecting our professional, family and social obligations, but with our hearts set on Heaven, always remembering that we are on a path whose goal is Heaven.

Our day-to-day obligations are the seeds of eternal life. The way we fulfill these obligations can bring the fruit of a happy eternity in Paradise. We gain Heaven not in spite of our worldly tasks, but precisely because of those tasks.

Father Joseph Kentenich used to say that we need to do the ordinary extraordinarily well and faithfully fulfil our duties (Schoenstatt–The Founding Documents Waukesha 1993 and Everyday Sanctity Sch e-Library 2006). Seeking the utmost care in every single thing we need to do during the day, and offering that care to God, is the way to always lift up our hearts.

In our hectic routine, everything wants to attract our attention. Social networks with their countless stimuli every second can take our focus away from what is most important, our eternal salvation. Our passions and weaknesses can also drag us down, trapping our hearts in the fleeting things of this world. So, in order to live the “sursum corda” we need courage and strength to fight against everything that takes us away from God.

This struggle will last our whole lives, because the enemy of God also wants to possess our heart and will. But with the constant help of grace and our firm will to live with our hearts in heaven, it will be possible. We must start again with every fall, asking for forgiveness and trusting in God's infinite mercy, knowing that he wants our salvation much more than we do.

Practicing

In order to incorporate this “sursum corda” culture into our lives, we need to start, as soon as we wake up, with a small prayer offering our whole day. Give thanks for waking up and having another chance to love God through our attitudes and the faithful fulfillment of our duties. Little by little, we can incorporate small breaks of a few minutes into our routine to renew this desire to live with our hearts in heaven, offering the next task to do, no matter how trivial. We can also fill our day with jaculatories, which are short phrases (prayers) that we send to God. And at the end of the day, before going to sleep, we give thanks for our achievements and ask for forgiveness for our day's shortcomings, renewing our resolve to be even better the next day.

That way, on the day the Father calls us to give an account of our lives, we'll be at ease because we've spent our lives with Him and heaven won't be a strange place for us. Our hearts have always been there!