Breaking the Word

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Thursday in the First Week of Ordinary Time (I)
Affairs of the Heart

Readings: Hebrews 3:7-14; Psalm 95:6-7c, 8-9, 10-11; Mark 1:40-45

O that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts’…

For the last couple of days we have been attending to how Jesus experiences and responds to different temptations. To the temptation to escape the messiness of human life, Jesus responds by embracing the fullness of human existence. To the temptation of clinging to the gifts of God, Jesus responds by clinging to his heavenly Father, the giver of all good gifts. Today, our readings focus our attention on the heart.

Harden not you hearts… But what does this mean? Surely we are respectable people. We don’t have hardened hearts

Yet we know there are different ways of being hardened. Sometimes it’s a matter of taste. It’s like how the person who is used to drinking tea with sugar will find unsweetened tea tasteless. Or how a person who is used to very salty food finds anything less salty bland. Similarly, we can coarsen or even deaden our taste for the things of God by over-indulging in material, secular, even sinful things. There is also the hardening that results from trauma. It’s sort of like when we get a cut and a scab forms over the injury to protect it. But the scab also has no feeling. Similarly the pains and disappointments of life can cause us to form scabs over our hearts that prevent us from feeling the touch of others and of God. Then there is the hardening that comes with prejudice. For example, we may grow up being taught that all Malays are lazy, such that even when we are grown up, our eyes are blind to the diligence that any Malay might exhibit. Or, because of what’s going on in the world around us, we may think that Islam is a religion that only teaches violence, and that all Muslims are violent fanatics. And our hearts are hardened to the good that is found in the Islamic faith and its adherents.

In contrast, Jesus shows us in the gospel what it’s like to have a heart of flesh. By any account, he should have rebuffed the leper’s request. People were taught in Jesus’ day, even by the Law, to treat a leper as an outcaste . Yet Jesus is moved with pity for him and even touches him.

But we must not be mistaken. The gospel is not just presenting Jesus as a model for us to follow. Indeed, how many of us will find Jesus’ example easy to emulate? Rather, I am that leper. Just as the leper’s affliction affects his capacity to experience sensations, so too does my hardened heart disable me and prevent me from exercising my spiritual senses. Like the leper, I need humbly to kneel before the Lord and beg him for help. And we are confident that Jesus will heal us, that he will replace our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. After all, does his compassion not lead him to take upon himself the consequences of the leper’s illness? While the leper is re-integrated into society, Jesus could no longer go openly into any town. We need to throw ourselves before the mercy of the Lord. We need to ask him for hearts capable of hearing God and feeling compassion for others.

How is God healing our hardened hearts today?

3 comments:

Jacqueline (Jacquie) WebbThu Jan 11, 04:19:00 pm GMT+8
I wish there was some way for these reflections to reach young Priests in Africa, who want to give good sermons but who find it difficult. It would be good if the reflections could be given a month ahead, so these good Priests have time to prepare. This feedback was given to me by an Irish Priest in his late 50's now ministering in Kenya.

Jacquie Webb
jpii@pacific.net.sg
or
webb.jacquie@gmail.com
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GraceThu Jan 11, 04:32:00 pm GMT+8
Perhaps this is what I term as being "immuned" just like how when we see "bad" news being reported everyday in the papers that it slowly becomes just another "statistic"...nothing "bad" seems to be a surprise anymore...
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AnonymousFri Jan 12, 09:22:00 pm GMT+8
There's actually already a whole host of homilies helps available on line. Here's a sample:

http://academics.smcvt.edu/pcouture/homilies.htm

Hope this helps.
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Breaking News: Easter

The fifty days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost are celebrated in joyful exultation as one feast day, or better as one "great Sunday." These above all others are the days for the singing of the Alleluia. The Sundays of this season rank as the paschal Sundays and, after Easter Sunday itself, are called the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Sundays of Easter. The period of fifty sacred days ends on Pentecost Sunday. The first eight days of the Easter season make up the octave of Easter and are celebrated as solemnities of the Lord. On the fortieth day after Easter the Ascension is celebrated, except in places where, not being a holyday of obligation, it has been transferred to the Seventh Sunday of Easter (see no. 7).[R4] The weekdays after the Ascension until the Saturday before Pentecost inclusive are a preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit. ~ General Norms for the Liturgical Year & Calendar, 22-26

From 36th Jesuit General Congregation

It is our union with one another in Christ that testifies to the Good News more powerfully than our competences and abilities.... In our individualistic and competitive age, we should remember that the community plays a very special role since it is a privileged place of apostolic discernment.... The Jesuit community is a concrete space in which we live as friends in the Lord. This life together is always at the service of mission, but because these fraternal bonds proclaim the Gospel, it is itself a mission. –Companions in a Mission of Reconciliation and Justice (CMRJ), nn. 7-9.

With the poor, we can learn what hope and courage mean.... In our communities and apostolates, we hear the call to rediscover hospitality to strangers, to the young, to the poor, and to those who are persecuted. Christ himself teaches us this hospitality. –CMRJ, nn. 15-16.

At the heart of Ignatian spirituality is the transforming encounter with the mercy of God in Christ that moves us to a generous personal response. The experience of the merciful gaze of God on our weakness and sinfulness humbles us and fills us with gratitude, helping us to become compassionate ministers to all.... For us Jesuits, compassion is action, an action discerned together. Yet we know that there is no authentic familiarity with God if we do not allow ourselves to be moved to compassion and action by an encounter with the Christ who is revealed in the suffering, vulnerable faces of people, indeed in the suffering of creation. –CMRJ, nn. 19-20.

(T)he Society must respond more decisively to the Church’s call for a new evangelization, giving special emphasis to ministry to and with the young and with families.... A special gift Jesuits and the Ignatian family have to offer to the Church and her mission of evangelization is Ignatian spirituality, which facilitates the experience of God and can therefore greatly help the process of personal and communal conversion. –CMRJ, nn. 22-23.

In many societies, there is an increased level of conflict and polarization, which often gives rise to violence that is all the more appalling because it is motivated and justified by distorted religious convictions. In such situations, Jesuits, along with all who seek the common good, are called to contribute from their religious-spiritual traditions towards the building of peace, on local and global levels. –CMRJ, n. 28.

Pope Francis has emphasized the fundamental connection between the environmental crisis and the social crisis in which we live today. Poverty, social exclusion, and marginalization are linked with environmental degradation. These are not separate crises but one crisis that is a symptom of something much deeper: the flawed way societies and economies are organised. The current economic system with its predatory orientation discards natural resources as well as people. For this reason, Pope Francis insists that the only adequate solution must be a radical one. The direction of development must be altered if it is to be sustainable. We Jesuits are called to help heal a broken world, promoting a new way of producing and consuming, which puts God’s creation at the center.... The multifaceted challenge of caring for our common home calls for a multifaceted response from the Society. We begin by changing our personal and community lifestyles, adopting behaviour coherent with our desire for reconciliation with creation. – CMRJ, nn. 29-30

From 35th Jesuit General Congregation

From General Congregation 35

By sending us to 'those physical and spiritual places which others do not or have difficulty reaching,' the Pope entrusts to us the task to 'build bridges of understanding and dialogue,' according to the best tradition of the Society, in the diversity of its ministries.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 6

To be missioned to this work 'at the New Frontiers of our times' always requires that one also be rooted at the very heart of the Church. This tension, specific to the Ignatian charism, opens the way to true creative fidelity.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 13

In every mission that we carry out, we seek only to be where (Christ) sends us. The grace we receive as Jesuits is to be and to go with him, looking on the world with his eyes, loving it with his heart and entering into its depths with his unending compassion.
- Decree on Identity, n. 15

For ultimately, there is no reality that is only profane for those who know how to look. We must communicate this look and provide a pedagogy inspired by the Spiritual Exercises, that carries people - especially the young - into it.
- Decree on Identity, n. 10

Our ministries of proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the Life of Christ in the sacraments continue to be fundamental for our mission and our lives together as Jesuits.
- Decree on Mission, n. 19

The complexity of the problems we face and the richness of the opportunities offered demand that we engage in building bridges between rich and poor and establishing advocacy links of mutual support between those who hold political power and those who find it difficult to voice their interests. Our intellectual apostolate provides an inestimable help in setting up these bridges, offering us new ways of understanding in depth the mechanism and links among our present problems.
- Decree on Mission, n. 28

Jesuit community is not just for mission, it is itself mission.
- Decree on Mission, n. 41

In this global context it is important to highlight the extraordinary potential represented by our character as an international and multicultural body. Acting consistently with this character can not only enhance the apostolic effectiveness of our work but in a fragmented and divided world it can witness to the reconciliation in solidarity of all the children of God.
- Decree on Mission, n. 43

Faith in Jesus Christ teaches us that self-realization comes from self-giving and that freedom is not so much the power to choose as the power to order our choices toward love. At the same time, love for Jesus Christ and the desire to follow him call us to trusting commitment. Commitment to the Word Incarnate cannot be separated from commitment to the concrete manifestations of the Word that are at the center of our lives, the Church and the Society which exists to serve the Church.
- Decree on Obedience, n. 19