Psalm Reflection: The Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Cycle B)

“If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” - Psalm 95

Hardheartedness.

That is the disease, the spiritual pandemic, that I have witnessed rapidly infiltrating the Church and the hearts of believers over the past year. I have seen its toxic, deadly symptoms spread through the news, headlines, and social media in the form of virtue signaling, doublespeak, self-righteousness, pride, “fraternal correction,” and quickly Googled quotes from Scripture that are laced in passive-aggressive judgment and not backed up by any real meaningful dialogue, listening, or action.

If Catholicism did not possess the fullness of truth, I 100% would be gone by now. If my being Catholic was not a result of first being faithful to and completely in love with Jesus Christ, there would be nothing else left to tether me. The hardheartedness I have seen in the Church is so anti-Gospel it breaks by heart and turns my stomach. We cannot turn to influencers and idolatry and ignore the Word and true worship. We cannot quote the Bible to support our stance, but refuse to let the Good News permeate our hardened hearts to challenge us.

We are too proud to admit that we are too proud.

We are too high and mighty to admit we have lost sight of the High and Mighty One.

We are too busy crafting our own voice to admit we can no longer hear His.

Our hearts are hardened because we cannot hear God’s voice. Why can’t we hear Him? Because we refused to listen to His voice when it came out of the lips of those we disagree with, those different from us, or in ways that were too convicting or uncomfortable for us, so we insecurely criticized and found reasons to silence them instead. We desperately need a reckoning and wrecking of our hardened hearts so that we can hear the true voice of God again, not the false voices we have created in our precious echo-chambers of one-sided noise.

As a believer in Jesus Christ, what if I, instead of assuming I am right and noble, assumed that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both holier than me? Better Christians or Catholics than me? I do not know their hearts, their consciences, their knowledge of the truth and the circumstances that lead to their decisions and actions, so any judgment I make upon their Christianity is baseless, unjust, and irrelevant. When it comes to their faith, they do not answer to me. We absolutely should question and challenge what we perceive to be wrong or unjust, but we must always remember that Christ dwells in all and that we may not have all the information. We should always hope we are wrong and seek to find the desires for love, belonging, truth, goodness and beauty that motivate every human decision, no matter how distorted they have become. Proclaiming Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead must matter more to us than winning an argument.

However, I DO know the circumstances that lead to my own decisions and actions. I know my own knowledge, conscience and culpability when it comes to my own sins. I know who I will answer to and I will have to justify every post, statement, and action of this past year and my entire life before God. Maybe I should care about my own sins more than I care about every one else’s.

How do we hear God’s voice today? Remove the obstacles of our own sin, and assume that God is speaking to us through others, through any and every person we meet. Assume the person you disagree with or dislike the most is a prophet sent by God for your own sanctification and holiness. Act as though your only desire is for them to know the risen Jesus and for them to get to Heaven. I wonder if we spoke to and listened to everyone around us as if they were a Saint then maybe we would actually have more Saints.

This week, try to avoid the surface level back-and-forth of social media. Instead, spend time in real dialogue, listening and speaking to those in your life, including those you disagree with. Take all their words to heart and try to find time to reflect upon them until you can hear the voice of God speaking through them. In the words of Dorothy Day: “I really only love God as much as the person I love the least.”

I am praying for you this week, please pray for me, and I will see you in the Eucharist.

Matt