Fourth Week of Ordinary Time, Year B
Deuteronomy 18:15–20
Psalm 95:1–2, 6–7, 7–9
1 Corinthians 7:32–35
Mark 1:21–28
“If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” St. Paul tells us that we must hear the Gospel in order to believe it. The Gospel is the proclamation of God’s Word to us. It can be heard only by hearts open to listen, to hear and to obey. Even the spirits that are evil hear the voice of God in Jesus and they must obey.
Our freedom leaves us many options when the Word of God is spoken to us. The psalmist invites us to hear and not to harden our hearts. We must choose to accept the Word as God’s Word to us and to respond in loving obedience. When the Word penetrates our hearts, and we choose to obey, God supplies the strength we need to accomplish His purpose.
The problem for us, often, is that we do not really hear God’s voice. The interference between the Word that is spoken to us and the path through our hearts into our souls and into our lives is too great.
Consider what happens each Sunday. We hear the Scriptures proclaimed from three different books of the Bible. At present, there is a first reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, a Responsorial Psalm, a second reading from a letter in the New Testament and a reading from one of the Gospels. Then there is a homily by a priest or deacon that is an invitation to respond to God’s Word.
How the Scriptures are proclaimed and the whole environment around us can be the source of interference. If readers are unfamiliar with the texts they proclaim, if there are noises from the members of the congregation, or if the sound system fails, we literally cannot hear the Word proclaimed or the invitation by the homilist.
How we prepare ourselves to receive the Word proclaimed and the homily can also be problematic. If we are unfamiliar with the Scriptures and their context, if we do not attend to the proclaimer or the preacher due to our own biases and expectations, if we “disagree” interiorly with the message given because of what the world around us believes or if we have hardened our hearts because we do not accept what we hear the Church teaching, then we are the source of the interference.
How we choose to respond to the Scriptures and to the homily is also often the source of some trouble. If we decide that we will not accept the authority of the Word or the Church or the minister who is preaching, if we have already chosen a course of action contrary to what the Word addresses and refuse to reconsider our stance, if we simply say “No” to God and to His Church, then the Word cannot flow through us as God intends. We are “stuck” where we are.
