Prepare Your Heart for Jesus

During Advent we are invited to prepare our hearts anew for Jesus, right? What does that mean and how do we do it? How do I make my heart a more inviting abode for our Lord? We reflected on this during the Advent talks I gave around my diocese recently, and I wanted to share some thoughts from that reflection with you here.

The word Advent means arrival; coming; coming into view, coming into being. Jesus “arrived” first through the Incarnation – that amazing moment in history when God became a tiny embryo and entered humanity through the womb of Mary. St. John Paul the Great called Mary’s womb the first Tabernacle; the meeting place of heaven and earth. In Mary’s womb, every ounce of God’s glory, majesty, and divinity was wed to our humanity.

With Mary’s fiat – her “yes” to God – she received His seed, nurtured and grew His life within her, and birthed Jesus into the world! We are each called to give our yes in a similar way; to allow Jesus’ life to grow within us – in the womb of our hearts – so that we may birth Him spiritually into the world around us.

“By his Incarnation, he, the Son of God, united himself with each man…Jesus came in a unique, unrepeatable way into the mystery of man and entered his heart.” – St. John Paul the Great

God came into your mystery, into my mystery, and entered our hearts! Isn’t that incredible? His entry into your heart has created a unique and unrepeatable union that has never before existed and will never exist again! Do we know that there is this holy reality taking place in our very bodies! This is the reality of the Incarnation. It was not just Christ entering humanity in some vague or ambiguous way. It is Christ entering every human! Christ in you. His divinity integrating with your humanity, right there, in your very own body!

Through this unique union of hearts, there is a particular way that only you can bring Jesus into being. There is a way that you reveal Him to the world that nobody else can. But to do this well, our hearts must be prepared. Our hearts must be like Mary’s womb: open, receptive, pure, ready to nurture His life.

St John of the Cross said, “God does not fit in an occupied heart.” So, the obvious question is, what occupies my heart? What occupies your heart? What is taking up space in there that God Himself wants to occupy?

Our hearts have experienced things that we were never meant to experience: wounding, traumatic experiences, dysfunction in our family of origin, violations of our dignity, the sins of others committed again us. And not only have we experienced things that were harmful, we also missed out on experiencing things that are essential to our wellbeing; things we needed for our secure attachment. Things like healthy affection from my father, his protective embrace, mom looking at me with delight on her face and kindness in her eyes, being spoken to in soothing tones, and much more.

We each have stories of harm and of heartache from our “formative years,” right, those earliest times in our lives when we were being formed. You and I were each formed in who we are as a son or daughter. We were formed in what it means to be a girl or boy, a man or woman.

What did we learn in our formation? Did I learn that who I am is good? Worthy of love, worthy of respect? Was I taught about my dignity, my value, my identity as beloved daughter of God? Or did I learn that I am too much, I’m a burden, unlovable, not enough?

Through this formation, our self-concept forms. We learn who we are (not necessarily the truth of who we are) by the ways we are interacted with when we are very young. That’s where our beliefs form; beliefs about ourselves, about what it means to be a mother, father, family, etc. And this stays with us! Early beliefs are anchored somewhere deeply within our beings and continue to play out in our present day habits of mind, habits of emotion, habits in our bodies, habits in the ways we cope, and even habits in the ways we sin.

Here in our adult lives, the stories of the harm and the heartache that have occurred in our lives, often become the stories we tend to tell ourselves again and again, leading to our habits of mind and habits of emotion. For a full understanding of how our early wounding and formation impacts us and leads to present day habits, you can check out the two video teachings in our online classroom, linked at the end of this post.

Healing for Our Heart Wounds
Our patterns that play out in the present, anchored in unconscious habits of mind and emotion, are rooted somewhere deeply within. This is the stuff that takes up space in our hearts!

I want you to know that with our Lord’s advent (arrival) comes the promise of great healing for us. He came to save us, didn’t He? In Revelation 21:5 we hear, “And he who sat upon the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.'”

He is making all things new! That includes you and me. And the how is through encounters with Him; through experiences of His presence and love in the places where we are most in need of healing.

The Scriptures are full of stories of Jesus meeting people right where they are and seeing beyond whatever is presenting itself. I’m thinking of the hemorrhaging woman, the woman caught in adultery, the blind beggar calling out to Him, the woman at the well, the crippled man at the pool of Bethsaida. He sees beyond the need that presents itself – the pattern. As He encounters them, or more accurately said, as they allow themselves to be encountered by Him in those deeper places, He leaves each of them transformed. And it is transformation that He desires for us as well.

Transformation and lasting healing happen through intimate encounters with Jesus. Will we let Him enter in further with us this season? Will we allow His love-filled gaze to penetrate the deepest places within us?

This is why He came! Why else would God have allowed Himself to become a helpless infant, completely dependent upon another for His survival, but for the hope of a deep, meaningful, transformational relationship with you? Why would He have allowed Himself to be born in utter poverty, but for the hope that we let Him into our utter poverty; those poorest, achiest, loneliest, most needy places within us?

I pray that through the Advent and Christmas seasons we will allow the Incarnation to become an extremely personal experience. Not simply an event that happened long ago, but the gateway to a here-and-now intimate relationship between you and Jesus.

And all that’s required of us is a little opening; a little emptying of the clutter in our hearts, so they will become more and more fitting abodes for the King of kings.

I’d like to close with a reflection from our newest book, The Womb of My Heart Rosary Devotional, written by my sister, Laura Ercolino. This devotional is a book for any time of the year, but it’s particularly beautiful to pray with during the Advent and Christmas seasons. The reflection below is from day 4:

“Today our focus shifts to the nativity of Christ. He is no longer hidden within Mary’s womb. Mary has given birth to Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us, and the invisible God has become visible. The Heart of God cries with cold and hunger; the Love of God has a face and tiny hands that reach for His Mama. The birth of Jesus was a moment in salvation history, yet the birthing of His love goes on throughout all of eternity. God invites you to become a living monstrance, a breathing temple, a life-giving womb. Christ wants to be born again in you. Being born in you, He can then be born through you into the world. This is the glory for which you were created.”

Purchase “The Womb of My Heart Rosary Devotional” in our shop here.

Two free video teaching in our online classroom mentioned above:
Healing the Heart Wounds
Healing for our Little Child Selves

Copyright 2025, De Yarrison