Hearts harden

The texts today from the Roman Catholic Lectionary are familiar to those who pray the Liturgy of the Hours. The daily reminder in the Morning Prayer of our tendency to harden our hearts to the will and grace of God is recalled for us by the author of the Letter to the Hebrews. We are people who struggle with the tension between what our passions, pride and preference pull us to do and how our indwelling Spirit invites us to open our hearts to the influence of the Will of God. Friar Jude Winkler identifies this reference of the author of Hebrews to the psalm text as a Rabbinic technique to bring the history known by the reader of the unfaithfulness of the Israelites in the desert to the attention of his readers today as an opportunity to reflect on how we face similar decisions daily. Friar Jude contributes some scholarship about the choice of Mark to place the account of the healing of the leper in the Gospel as a transition from Jesus healing of people in Capernaum to the confrontation to come when the religious authorities will question His forgiveness of sin even though they have the evidence of His healing the leper who is instructed by Jesus to fulfill the Law of Moses and present himself to the priest. Our hardness of heart is quite capable of rejection and ignorance of evidence which might testify against the course of action we have chosen to satisfy our will to put ourselves first. The example of Jesus today who finds His personal space invaded by the needy and Who chooses to take the “unclean” status of the leper upon Himself by touching and healing while at the same time recognizing the importance of the Law of Moses as the guide for the people. It is an example of holding nothing back. We pray the Liturgy of the Hours in daily recall of our mission to witness in a similar way.