Greetings on this the Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Readings: Ez 36:23-28; PS 51:12-13, 14-15, 18-19; Mt 22:1-14
Summary
In our readings today, the LORD proposes a solution to our essential problem.
We have a hardened heart. I asked AI to tell me what the idiom hardened heart means.
- Lack of Kindness.
- Lack of Compassion.
- Spiritual state of where someone is unable to see, understand, hear, and remember.
An online dictionary describes it as: to stop having kind or friendly feelings for someone or caring about something. She hardened her heart against him after their breakup. All the discord hardened my heart to politics.
Reflection
The Lord wants us to have a natural heart and spiritual health and so much more.
Here is a link to some practical ways to healed from a hardened heart.
According to Gordon Neufeld, a heart can only be softened with the cultivation of safe and caring attachments with others. It is relationship that offers someone the promise of safety, warmth, and dependence. It is attachment that is the antidote to facing too much separation and wounding. The human heart will spontaneously recover and experience vulnerable feelings again when emotional defenses are no longer needed. It cannot get there with a pill, prodding, pushing, cajoling, rewarding, or punishing – but only through the warmth of another human being.
Source: https://neufeldinstitute.org/editorials/softening-the-hardened-heart/
The LORD is the creator of relation and love. He knows the fullness of softening comes from forgiveness and safety. Both which are from the Lord. In our first reading today the promise and the responsorial the human response to the offer of the Lord.
Promise
I will sprinkle clean water upon you
to cleanse you from all your impurities,
and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you,
taking from your bodies your stony hearts
and giving you natural hearts.
Response
A clean heart create for me, O God,
and a steadfast spirit renew within me.
Cast me not out from your presence,
and your Holy Spirit take not from me.
In our gospel portion today, the completion of restoration of a human person concludes how it should: a Feast! A festival celebrating the restoration of persons, restoration of relations and the restoration of the entirety of creation.
Personal Reflection
He said to him, ‘My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’ This question is the case where a person did not accept the divine aid nor respond to the divine aid. Rather he showed up without a change of heart. Not a good answer. Baptism is the sacrament of the wedding garment.
In our day today, let us seek a clean heart, act with a clean heart and express the hope of the divine love within us. Heart to heart.
Sacred Readings
Full text: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/082224.cfm
First Reading
I will sprinkle clean water upon you to cleanse you from all your impurities, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts. I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes, careful to observe my decrees.
Responsorial
I will pour clean water on you and wash away all your sins.
Gospel Acclamation
If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Gospel
Tell those invited: “Behold, I have prepared my banquet, my calves and fattened cattle are killed, and everything is ready; come to the feast.”
Peace be with you,
Deacon Gerry