Interest in personality is hardly new; Western culture has long recognized the wide differences that mark individual persons. And while each of us is unique, we also share broad traits—introversion and extraversion, emotional and rational dispositions—that shape how we relate to God.
We often assume that the more emotional believer approaches God with the “heart,” while the more rational believer approaches God with the “head.” This familiar distinction can create an unhelpful either/or mentality. Yet in today’s gospel Jesus quotes the greatest commandment, insisting that we love the Lord our God with heart, soul, and mind. He is not merely urging totality; he is naming the distinct and necessary roles each plays in the life of faith.
The heart—our feelings and emotions—is essential, but it can also mislead. In our Catholic tradition, the purifying work of grace often brings distress, doubt, and a sense of God’s absence. Those who rely too heavily on emotion can become disoriented unless the mind, grounded in the truths of faith, steadies and exhorts the heart to trust beyond what it feels.
Conversely, those who relate to God primarily through intellect may keep God at a distance without realizing it. Knowledge about God is not the same as knowledge of God, and the mind alone cannot love. It is the heart that gives warmth, color, and intimacy to our relationship with the Lord. This is why Eastern Christianity speaks of the need for the mind to descend into the heart—an image of the integration that marks our recreation in Christ.
The Church offers many examples of this harmony, including our early Cistercian Fathers and, more recently, Pope Saint John Paul II, whose formidable intellect lived side by side with a childlike piety. One can picture him with a rosary in one hand and his dissertation on St. John of the Cross in the other.
The greatest commandment is therefore not only a summons but a roadmap. When the grace‑formed mind guides the emotions of the redeemed heart, and when the heart draws the mind into deeper intimacy with God, the sanctified soul emerges—capable of loving God as it ought.
Until that day, we make our own the prayer of Saint Anselm: Let my mind meditate on you, let my tongue speak of you, let my heart love you, let my soul hunger for you, my whole being desire you, until I enter into the joy of the Lord, who is God, Three in One, blessed forever. Amen.