 |
| drawneartogod.com - Heart of Africa, Gwen Meharg |
Deacon Tom Writes ©
“Obstinate of Heart”
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
In our first reading, Ezekiel
has a profound experience that he describes, “As the Lord spoke to me, the spirit entered into me and set me on my
feet”. Thus, the Lord has chosen Ezekiel to be his servant to deliver a
message to the Israelites that they have become a “rebellious house”. They are a people who are “hard of face and obstinate of heart” because they have turned away
from God and “rebelled against him”. This
is a theme we hear time and time again in the Old Testament. It is like the ebb
and flow of the tides, this turning to and then away from God. The one thing
that is constant throughout the ages though, is that God never does the turning
away. He always remains faithful to his people, always calling them to return
to him. And so God sends Ezekiel to deliver the message that a “prophet has been among them” urging
them to change their ways and turn their hearts to the Lord.
In
today’s gospel, we see another prophet at work among God’s people. The prophet
is Jesus, chosen by God, indeed, God in human form! But, worker of miracles though he is, he is rejected by the
people because they can’t get beyond their judging, skeptical hearts and minds
that are closed to the truth; they are “obstinate
of heart”! So we read that
Jesus, “was not able to perform any
mighty deeds there” and “He was
“amazed at their lack of faith”.
These
scripture passages point out our tendency to resist the Holy. Indeed, God
actually names the condition that plagues us. He refers to it as having an “obstinate heart”. An obstinate heart
resists God’s invitation into the mystery of the divine presence. An obstinate
heart is closed to the transformation that the divine presence is able to bring
about in us and actually desires to bring about in us. We develop this
condition when we refuse to be open to an alternative way of thinking or seeing
the reality around us. This is very much a part of our human condition,
inherited, perhaps, through “original sin”. We all have a large degree of
obstinacy in us.
One
remedy for overcoming an “obstinate heart”
that impairs our spiritual growth is prayer, that time we spend opening our
hearts and minds to Our Lord. This is the traditional way of letting God into
our lives so we may be filed with his presence. Of course, the very desire for
prayer comes from God who never abandons nor turns his back on us. Prayer will
always turn the hardest and most obstinate of hearts to ones full of love and
compassion.
Happy
4th of July…Enjoy this special day and give thanks to God for the
freedoms we enjoy!
Deacon Tom
No comments:
Post a Comment