Maria and I went to a friend’s art show at a local brewery Saturday evening, and I was surprised and happy to see DorLisa, a transportation aide at the Mansion and one of my favorite people in the world.

DorLisa sang at Ruth and Wayne’s Commitment Ceremony at the Mansion.

She has a beautiful voice. She sang “Amazing Grace” at Christmas and Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors” at the Commitment Ceremony.

She is a profoundly loving soul.

She told someone at the reception that we worked together at the Mansion, and she stopped me in my tracks by saying “Jon has a Jesus Heart.”

I was startled, and uncomfortable. No one had ever called me that before, or anything like it, and I should say it is not the way I see myself, which is perhaps a good thing.

But it got into my head, I thought I should figure it out, I thought I should write about it. I took the dogs out into the pasture and kept repeating the phrase over and over in my head.

I reached for my Thomas Merton books, my Paul Tillich essays, my Henri Nouwen writings, even some Wendell Berry poems. Nobody even mentioned a “Jesus Heart,” let alone defined one.

But Merton helped me, as always: “You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.”

I’ll settle for that, that is perhaps as far as I can go.

I’ve admired the real Jesus Christ my whole life and studied his life for many years. Even though I am not a Christian, I am deeply inspired by his passion for helping the needy and the vulnerable, it was the core of his faith.

It  is painful to see so many people who evoke his name distort what he believed and exploit his name. These people better hope he doesn’t return.  If he drove the priests out of the Temple, what might he do the hypocrites and greedy opportunists in Washington?

It makes me angry, and that is something Jesus also was, and often.

Not in a thousand years would I equate his heart to mine.

But still, I wandered about what DorLisa had said. I blushed and murmured and asked her what she meant. She said people with a Jesus Heart are called to help people and show love, they helped people not to promote themselves, but out of their own need.

I messaged my new friend Sue Silverstein, she is, after all the Theology Chair at Bishop Maginn High School, and who better to ask about a Jesus Heart?

She wrote back quickly: “It means you are kind and good and care deeply about people. If someone said you had the heart of Jesus they were correct.”

She added: “it’s a very high compliment from a Christian. It’s about as good as it gets for a Christian to say that of someone, but it’s very true of you. I agree.”

Sue said it also means that “you are willing to sacrifice  yourself for the good of others, which is also true of you. When I was a child my favorite aunt, who often saved me when I was lost used to say, when someone gives you a compliment you have trouble believing about yourself, just lower your eyes, smile, and say thank you.”

I loved Sue’s message to me, wise and honest as she usually is, and I smiled for a second.

My grandmother, Minnie Cohen, a devout Orthodox Jew from Russia, loved me as much or more as anyone in the world ever has, and also saved me more than once, and I did have a moment’s smile thinking about how she would react to the idea that I had the heart of Jesus Christ, or if she would consider it a great compliment.

It seems hollow and presumptuous to say or think that I do or don’t have the heart of anybody else, let alone Jesus Christ.  There is no good answer to that. I am grateful for the compliment, it swells my heart.

My job, I think, is to learn to love others without stopping to figure out whether or not they are worthy.

That is not my business, nor is it anybody else’s business. It’s true, I do need to help others, and it’s also true that I don’t really and completely know why.

But I’m thinking that’s not really my business either.

I also thought about telling my grandmother that I was  happily married to a lapsed Catholic, half Sicilian and half German. The very gentile she had always cautioned warned me against marrying. They didn’t cook or clean houses well, she said.

Well, she was right about that, judging from my marriage, but I think she would have given me the same advice – I think she did – as Sue’s aunt gave her.

If someone gives you a compliment that is very deep, and that you don’t believe about  yourself, just lower your eyes, smile, and say thank you.

I won’t belabor it any further. I will let it sit and simmer for awhile. Who am I to quarrel about theology with a Theology Chair?

I’ll just take the compliment.

I will lower my head and smile. Thank you, DorLisa.

You too, Sue.