Saint Benedict takes his cue from Psalm 95(94), which he prescribed to be sung at the beginning of the first liturgical office of the day. Its message is clear: “Today if you hear God’s voice, harden not your hearts.”
As we have seen, God’s light shines upon us every day and God’s call invites us to a more abundant life. The problem is that too often we are not on the correct wavelength. We are so concerned with what we are feeling and doing that we do not take the trouble to step back from these immediate preoccupations, and so we are not aware of anything beyond them. Our conscience is mostly blank. Occasional glimmers of something else are quickly swamped by our need to do the things we have to do, and so a lot of our good thoughts and good intentions come to nothing.
This insensitivity is moving toward the state that is described in the Bible as “hardness of heart.” The surface of the heart is toughened so that it becomes progressively impenetrable: nothing can get through to it. In the Gospel of Mark Jesus often rebukes his disciples for this: “You do not yet know, you do not yet understand, you have a hardened heart” (Mark 8:1 7). Good will is there, but it is locked behind closed doors, and so it loses contact with the reality of a changing situation; unless something startling happens, there is little prospect of growth.
Michael Casey, OSCO
The Road to Eternal Life, p. 37
