Word to the Wise
Friday, January 14, 2011 - Thursday in the First Week in Ordinary Time
[Hebrews 3:7-14 and Mark 1:40-45]Take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil and unfaithful heart, so as to forsake the living God. Encourage yourselves daily while it is still "today," so that none of you may grow hardened by the deceit of sin. We have become partners of Christ if only we hold the beginning of the reality firm until the end.
One of the key concepts of the church developed at the Second Vatican Council is that of the "pilgrim People of God." The idea has its roots in the wandering of the Israelites in the desert. The passage from Hebrews in today's first scripture begins with a quotation from Psalm 95, which is used daily in the Liturgy of the Hours! "Harden not your hearts as your ancestors did in the desert, when they tested me although they had seen my works....." Israel's "wandering" did not stop when they reached the Promised Land! They continued to "stray" after the deities of surrounding cultures. The prophets of the Old Testament provide us with more than enough vivid descriptions of what this meant.
A pilgrimage may be undertaken with a particular destination in view, or it may become an aimless way of life. The Letter to the Hebrews reminds the reader that the success of the pilgrimage depends on fidelity to Christ. The goal is to be a "partner" of Christ and to enter into the same heavenly sanctuary that he has entered. We can't have one without the other. The principal danger lies in "hardness of heart" that arises when one becomes indifferent to faith or integrity in living out Christian morality on a daily basis. I can recall my astonishment at times in campus ministry at the various "options" available to students that could lead to terrible consequences, and how callous some of them could be about pursuing these options: "Hey Man, it's, like, my body, you know!" The vocabulary may change later on, but the indifference can remain because of habits of lifestyle that become a way of life! When faith finally makes its way through that hard lifestyle shell, the difficulties in changing the lifestyle can be so challenging that some just don't bother. "Hardness of heart" may be covered over with flowery rationalization about "freedom." Partnership with Christ seems to them to be an invitation to a puritanical way of living characterized by the words, "Thou shalt not......."
The pilgrim People of God is by no means perfect, and few of us make the pilgrimage in a straight line. Keeping the goal in front of us can help us to return time and time again to the right way instead of a stubborn determination to destroy ourselves by pursuing lethal dead ends! AMEN
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