Word to the Wise
Thursday, January 14, 2021 - Thursday in the 1st Week in Ordinary Time
[Heb 3:7-14 and Mark 1:40-45]Oh that today you would hear his voice, harden not your hearts......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 with Christ if only we hold the beginning of the reality firm until the end. [Hebrews]
The passage from the Letter to the Hebrews today contains a quote from Psalm 93(94) which is included in the official Liturgy of the Hours at Morning Prayer. "Oh that today you would hear his voice, harden not your hearts...." This quotation is part of the encouragement that the Letter is offering. It is common today to hear of _________-fatigue. This arises when we feel that we are being overwhelmed and numbed by a constant effort. The early Christian community clearly experienced this. They experienced periodic persecution by the Roman authorities as well as being expelled from synagogues and, in those places St. Paul ministered, "competition" from pagan religious practices. But we stand on their shoulders!
The various "fatigues" that we experience have a way of n"hardening" the heart and eroding even the highest and more important "ideals" that we hold dear. We can begin to make little and not-so-little compromises. These can be doctrinal as well as practical. Can there be such a thing as "faith-fatigue." Yes, there can be! I have seen this many times in my pastoral experience in campus ministry. Maintaining a commitment in faith and the practice of the faith can be very difficult in a university culture. Little compromises lead to bigger ones. Our church is sometimes one of the causes of this because of "finger-wagging" judgmental preaching or inability to understand the challenges facing a faithful Catholic Christian on campus, or anywhere else for that matter.
The Letter to the Hebrews offers us a kind of "pep-talk" in perseverance, reminding us that those who have gone before us are counting on us to continue their faith and life. We are "partners of Christ," but that means we live that partnership "today" and not let our hearts be hardened by fatigue. AMEN