“If today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” (Psalm 95: 7-8)
Psalm 95 is the invitation to the daily Morning Prayer of the Church throughout the world and has been so throughout the ages. We need to pray it because, let’s face it: we are hard-hearted people.
We need daily reminders not to remain that way but to open our hearts and allow them to be softened.
Recently, Pope Francis spoke some surprising words at his morning Mass–he said that the Lord was hard-headed.
He was preaching about Jonah who was sent to preach a call to repentance to the people of Nineveh. Maybe you remember the story, first Jonah stubbornly refuses the call and gets swallowed up by a fish after a storm.
And then, once the Ninevites actually listen to his message, he plops himself down to watch their destruction. He stubbornly refuses to accept that the Lord has relented and will not destroy them. After all, was it all a waste of his time?
Pope Francis says, here we see a clash between two hard heads: on the one hand we find Jonah, stubbornly refusing to budge, and on the other is the Lord who is just as stubborn when it comes to showing mercy.
The Book of Jonah pointedly wraps up without telling us the end of the story. Does Jonah come around? Does he allow himself to be changed or does he stay as hard-hearted as he is hard-headed?
It’s a good rhetorical strategy. As a reader we must place ourselves in the place of Jonah. It is our turn to respond to the message.
And what will our response be? Will we remain hard-hearted, as well as hard-headed?
Or, will we allow our hearts to be softened and opened to love and God’s stubborn, unrelenting way of mercy?