1/15/2015 – Thursday of first week in Ordinary Time – Psalm 72

      If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your hearts…as in the day of Massah in the desert. Massah means “testing.”  It is a place where the Israelites stopped in the middle of the desert while they were on the Exodus after leaving Egypt on the way to the promised land.  At Massah, the Israelites argued with Moses about the lack of water on their journey.  Moses rebuked them for testing God.  We can all harden our hearts to God in different ways, can’t we?  We can be angry at God for this way our lives turn out, for illness or disease or struggle in our own lives or in the lives of our loved ones.  We can hold a grudge, refusing to forgive or to reconcile with our brothers and sisters.  Like the Israelites, we can try to put God to the test.  Then, we can be disappointed or angry with God if we don’t get what we want.  Sometimes we come to God with a list of things that we want, not asking what God wants of us. As the psalmist says, we need to open our hearts to hear God’s voice.

      I remember working with a group of youth on a mission project for a week at Catholic Heart Work Camp when I was a seminarian.  At the end of the work, the youth were remarking that the hardest thing for them during the week was to work without any music or noise blaring.  They weren’t used to being surrounding by silence.  They always tried to fill the silence with noise.  Do we fill our lives with so many things that God’s voice does not have a chance, that our hearts become hardened to what he has to say.  Let us think about that today.