By F. Luis Casasús, General Superior of Idente missionaries
Commentary on the XXVII Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 7 2018, Paris.
(Book of Genesis 2,18-24; Letter to the Hebrews 2,9-11; Saint Mark 10,2-16).
Because of the hardness of your hearts. This is the explanation given by Jesus on the attitude of the Jews and Moses’ emergency arrangement. How about if the wife finds something indecent in her husband, can she also write a bill of divorce and hand it to her husband? This was never stated. There we have a bitter fruit of our hardness of heart, although a bill cannot be the solution to the problem of our hardened conscience.
Even the Pharisees’ formulation of the question reveals a lack of sympathy and tenderness: Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife? Law is not everything in our lives!
Today, we are hardly shocked when we hear that a couple we know have decided to divorce. In some countries, as many as half of the marriages end in the divorce courts. But it is always hard when a relationship that began with high hopes has devolved into rejection and pain. Today’s First Reading and Gospel deal with this issue, but a careful reading and a quiet reflection reveal that Jesus wants to teach us something extremely crucial at all times.
How can a relationship survive and develop? A parallel, or perhaps preliminary question is: How our relationships with God and our neighbors are destroyed? Failed relationships are perhaps the main reason for which we start to search for answers about life, or sadly making tragic decisions.
The root of the problem is that we are deceived by our Instinct for Happiness. We can safely say that it is more essential than the Dominant Defect. We cannot remove it the way we take off a shirt, but we can be free from its effects through a permanent state of prayer. To be hard of heart means being dragged by this instinct, making us become insensitive by darkening our thoughts, diverting our energy from our best wishes and preventing us from looking at one another in the face.
Firstly, not only our thoughts, but our mindset becomes rigid. We incapable of thinking outside our narrow individual universe, out of our plans. Attachment to our judgments is the most visible and lethal manifestation in our mind. Allow me to illustrate it with an (apparently) funny story:
A rookie reporter got his very first job ever with a small-town newspaper. The editor sends him to cover the biggest wedding of the year for the wealthiest family in town. The editor sends him off and in just moments he is back at the office. The editor says: What’s the deal here? And he says: Well, I drove up to the church, and as I drove up, the bride and her father came up in a limousine. As they were walking into the church, a black car with four hooded men peeled up, got out with guns, shot the bride’s father, held the bride hostage, threw her into the black car, and drove away. So there was no wedding to cover, so I came back.
You can imagine what the editor thought about that. The whole point of a good reporter is that you have to have an eye for news. If that reporter did not realize that that was news, his career was not going to last very long. Likewise, because of and through grace, we have got to have an eye for needs.
Reflecting on the attitude of the Pharisees, Pope Francis said (April 10, 2014) that today there is a dictatorship of narrow-mindedness that kills people’s freedom. Their mistake, the Pope pointed out, was detaching the commandments from the heart of God. They thought everything could be resolved by respecting the commandments. But these commandments are not just a cold law, because they are born from a relationship of love and are indications that help us avoid mistakes in our journey to meet Jesus. By doing so, the Pharisees close their hearts and minds to all things new. This is the drama of the closed heart, the drama of the closed mind and when the heart is closed, this heart closes the mind, and when the heart and mind are closed there is no place for God, only for what we believe should be done.
Secondly, not only our thoughts, but our energy and strength are weakened. False expectations provide the mechanism for this. As an effect of our short-sightedness and self-centered vision, we hope that doing some efforts we will reap all sorts of rewards, particularly we will be more popular, successful, or attractive. Of course, we need to have some form of control of our lives. For instance, just phoning to schedule an appointment with a psychotherapist produces measurable improvement in distressed individuals; likewise, a study of cancer patients found that the more the patients perceived they had some control over their disease, the less depressed they were.
The problem is that, pushed by our Instinct for Happiness, we try to make this control absolute. We create high hopes and expectations of successful outcomes and we become victims of the so-called the false-hope syndrome. Our attempts to regulate one’s behavior and other people, utilize mental energy, which soon will become depleted. A well-known example in mental health and spiritual life are some of our attempts to suppress some negative thoughts; this can make the unwanted thoughts even more salient, resulting in their eventual supremacy.
All of us hold unrealistic expectations. It has been said that in fact, the biggest unrealistic expectation is that people should not have unrealistic expectations. The most frequent is probably our false image of God. Sometimes this idol tailor-made for me is intended to be a permanent source of satisfactions, the instantaneous solution to all my difficulties and the answer to all my questions. We make a vulgar and thoughtless interpretation of Jesus statement: Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest (Mt 11: 28). This rest is based on an active and fulfilling participation in His kingdom, something that is risky and painful, as He says openly in the parable of the sower:
Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away.
God’s ways are higher than our ways. Maybe my idea of who God is was just a card-house construction, ready to be knocked over at the first hint of adversity. Rather than being shaken by the collapse of our false expectations and limited ideas about God, we can take great comfort in this. God is beyond what we can imagine, and He will use our pressures, trials, and difficulties to bring us to a new degree of spiritual beauty.
A little girl who was walking in a garden noticed a particularly beautiful flower. She admired its beauty and enjoyed its fragrance. It’s so pretty! she exclaimed. As she gazed on it, her eyes followed the stem down to the soil in which it grew. This flower is too pretty to be planted in such dirt! she cried. So she pulled it up by its roots and ran to the water faucet to wash away the soil. It wasn’t long until the flower wilted and died.
When the gardener saw what the little girl had done, he exclaimed: You have destroyed my finest plant!
She said: I’m sorry, but I didn’t like it in that dirt. The gardener replied: I chose that spot and mixed the soil because I knew that only there could it grow to be a beautiful flower.
It might be useful to recall here a statement of C. S. Lewis: God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
Paying attention to our expectations and communication is an important preventive measure both in marital and community life; we have to continuously guard against expecting others to always serve you, against expecting others to always agree with you, against expecting others to do all the work you think they should be doing, against expecting others to get involved with particular causes with which you are involved, against expecting they can read and meditate everything you say or write…and against your belief that some things are not required or essential to communicate.
Anything of value in life requires a certain amount of sacrifice and struggle: a successful career, having a child…Deep and meaningful relationships are not exempt from the same law everything else is subject to. You will have to sacrifice feeding your ego. Even more, for a disciple of Christ, it is important to realize that our Savior, Brother and Leader was also perfected through suffering, as we can shockingly see in today’s Second Reading: For it was fitting that he, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the leader to their salvation perfect through suffering.
Thirdly, we become especially insensitive to the needs of our neighbors and to what God is asking us for today. We fail to know their true lives. We are dealing with human beings, and human beings always need something more than technically proper care
We can illustrate this with the positive example of the New York Mayor Fiorello Laguardia (1882-1947). One day he took the place of the court judge and a shivering old man was brought before him. The man was charged for taking a loaf of bread from a bakery. The accused man gave the excuse that his family was starving. The law allows no exceptions. I have to punish you. I have to fine you ten dollars, declared La Guardia. But then he felt his pocket and added: Here is ten dollars to pay the fine. And raising his voice, he continued: I now impose on everyone present in this courtroom a fine of fifty cents each for living in a town where folk must steal bread in order to live. Sergeant, collect the money at once and hand it over to the accused. The hat went round and the accused man left the court with forty-seven dollars in his pocket.
To refuse to rejoice with another reveals envy in my own heart. To refuse to weep with another is to reveal a lack of compassion in my heart. Either way…I have a serious problem. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn (Rom 12: 15).
Another sign of our hardness of heart: Try catching yourself the next time you tell two brothers/sisters in a row that you are doing just fine -without paying attention to their opinions- and decide to listen to what they have to say.
Saint Paul is crystal clear explaining the consequences of living with a hardened heart: So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more (Eph 4:17-19).
I always see in our father Founder and in Pope Francis two models of Christian relationship with God and their fellowmen, mainly because they reveal their true selves, their childhood experiences, their inner struggles and they acknowledge their vulnerability. This form of openness is precisely the right way to welcome the kingdom of heaven, just as children do: Let the children come to Me, and do not hinder them, for as such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child shall not enter it (Lk 18:16-17)
Opening wide your heart may not always be easy, but this is what a true apostle continuously does: We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you. We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us. As a fair exchange—I speak as to my children—open wide your hearts also (2 Cor 6:11-13).
Not only that, but being the first to open our heart, will prompt our neighbor to immediately do the same.
True Christian compassion is the opposite to a hardened heart. Compassion is more than finding solutions for people who have problems. It is an inspired and always new way of walking with and alongside other people. The French priest Saint John Mary Vianney, Curé d’Ars went to visit an elderly widow when her only son died. People expected him to help her make sense of her loss. Instead he simply sat beside her, put his hand on her shoulder and let his tears flow with hers. Compassion is more than sympathy. It is emotional and spiritual empathy. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn? (2 Corinthians 11:29).
And remember, we become compassionate when we accept and acknowledge God’s compassion. Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate (Lk 6:36).
Tips to make the most of the Holy Mass
- The Eucharistic Prayer. Here is a summary of its parts:
- The thanksgiving, expressed especially in the Preface, in which the priest, in the name of the holy people, glorifies God the Father and gives thanks to him for the whole work of salvation or for some particular aspect of it, according to the varying day, festivity, or time of year. The Lord be with you …
- The acclamation, by which the whole congregation sings the Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy).
- The epiclesis, (in Greek, “invocation” or “calling down from on high”) This invocation of the Spirit is marked by the priest placing his hands over the gifts of bread and wine, asking that the Spirit be sent upon them to make them holy.
- The Institution narrative and Consecration, by which, by means of the words and actions of Christ, that Sacrifice is effected which Christ himself instituted during the Last Supper. Take this, all of you, and eat of it… Take this, all of you, and drink from it…
As the Host and the Cup are raised, we can help our souls to express what they know by silently adoring the One who has joined us in these sacramental signs, perhaps privately using the words of Thomas: My Lord and my God.
- The memorial acclamation (from the Greek anamnesis, meaning memorial) the congregation is invited to proclaim the “mystery of faith”. This short sung response is addressed to Christ, sacramentally present under the form of bread and wine, and is a joint affirmation by priest and people to what has just been prayed: Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body…Take this, all of you, and drink from it… The anamnesis highlights the liturgy as one of remembering Christ and what He has done for us.
The Missal provides three options for the memorial acclamation.
- The oblation, by which we offer the sacrificial Victim in the Holy Spirit to the Father. The Church’s intention, indeed, is that the faithful not only offer this unblemished sacrificial Victim but also learn to offer their very selves, and so day by day to be brought, through the mediation of Christ, into unity with God and with each other, so that God may at last be all in all.
- The intercessions: laying before God the needs of the Church on earth – of the world – and remember those who have died and look ahead ourselves to the day when we are enter into the communion of saints in heaven.
- The concluding doxology. A “doxology” is the English translation of a Greek word which means a short hymn of praise to God. The priest proclaims: Through Him, with Him, in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours almighty Father, forever and ever, as he raises the consecrated host and in the Blood in the sacred chalice for the entire congregation to see and ponder. This short prayer is a Trinitarian formula of praise to God the Father through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ, in union with the Holy Spirit.
