Rend your hearts

"Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God." (Joel 2: 12)

I cannot remember my precise situation when I confided the following reflection to my journal early in 1999.

"Return to God with your whole heart. I have resolved to return to God with my whole heart this Lent by mounting a vigorous struggle against two temptations: food and selfishness.

Rend your hearts and not your garments: fasting, prayer and thanksgiving are external signs of the interior attitude of rending the heart."