“Oh, that today you would listen to his voice: ‘Harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day at Massah in the desert, when your fathers tempted me, when they tried me though they saw my works’.” (Psalm 95:8-9)
This text is prayed every morning as part of the invitatory psalm at the beginning of the Divine Office, and it contains an important daily caution to ‘harden not your hearts’. On Tuesday, I spoke about the heart as the seat of the will, and how loving the Lord with our whole heart is a choice rather than a feeling. Having a hardened heart then is not just about feeling angry at God, it is more subtle than that.
You may remember how in the book of Exodus Pharaoh’s heart was hardened after each of the plagues of Egypt – he did not recognise that they came from the God of the Hebrews and therefore he refused to grant the Israelites their freedom. The point is not that Pharaoh was a mean and angry person – though that may be true – the point is that having a hardened heart is a form of blindness, of choosing not to see things as they really are. A hardened heart makes us deaf to God’s voice, and numb to God’s will in our lives. A hardened heart is a symptom of pride.
A heart can become hardened in many ways… through not giving thanks for past graces received; through not trusting in God’s promises; through sarcasm and negativity; through sloth and neglect of the things of God; through too much time in front of the TV instead of the tabernacle… all these little sins can build up on our soul like dust on a mirror, until it clouds the image of God we’re trying to reflect. That’s why it’s so important to go to confession regularly, to wipe the slate clean. A hardened heart is softened by little acts of humility that chip away at our pride, and a humble heart is strengthened by contrition and repentance when we fall.