The Holy Spirit says
It is always the Holy Spirit who, together with the human author, is speaking in the Scriptures. We note that his speech is not in the past tense. Rather he is continuously speaking his word to those who listen with faith.
Oh, that today you would hear his voice,
“Harden not your hearts as at the rebellion
in the day of testing in the desert,
It is easy to recognize the mistakes of those biblical figures with whom we are well familiar, easy to dismiss the dessert grumbling of the exodus generation as something we would never do. And yet do we not grumble as well, both aloud, and especially in our hearts? Are we not often so displeased with our pleasant circumstances that we become unable to hear God speaking to us in the moment? It often seems that one day we are thanking God for his providential protection and gifts of grace. Then, the next day, while still partaking of these same gifts, we can only think about our problems and unmet needs.
One reason why we so frequently choose to harden our hearts is because to do so feels safe. The opposite of a hard heart is a heart of flesh, which is in fact a vulnerable heart. It is a heart which does not place walls of self-protection between it and its creator God. But this means it is also a heart which surrenders itself as a locus of control and, instead of its own strategies of self-protection, consciously chooses to place its trust in God.
Because of this I was provoked with that generation
and I said, ‘They have always been of erring heart,
and they do not know my ways.’
This risk of hardening our hearts is not removed by receiving grace and favor from God. It is a matter of how we receive them that decides whether they will help or hinder our progress. If we end up more concerned about ourselves than following God's lead through the desert on our pilgrimage of life our goals will always be different than his. We will therefore always be frustrated, even by the way he helps us. We will then ignore or even reject his help because it wasn't what we were seeking. Like the Israelites in the desert our desires for pleasure, our fear of arduous undertakings, and our aversion to suffering all tempt us to place ourselves in the center, to forget we our on pilgrimage, and to attempt to find a way to camp in this desert in perfect comfort forever.
As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter into my rest.
The Lord is trying to lead us to heavenly rest. But if we insist on preferring something other than what he desires for us it is no wonder that we cannot enter it. Yet even though we ourselves often become stubborn and dig in our heels, and even though rejecting God is worse the longer and more deeply we have known him, it is still not too late while it is still "today". This "today" is still ongoing, but not a given. One day our lives will end. One day Jesus will return to judge the world. We need to finally shed this hardness of heart before that day.
But exhort one another every day
We are called to help one another along the way. None of us makes this pilgrimage alone. The Holy Spirit longs to work through each of us to encourage others. It is he himself who desires to turn hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, and often he will do so through the agency of believers.
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh (see Ezekiel 36:26).
Even in the face of such encouragement the temptation to harden our heart remains. But where sin abounds grace abounds still more (see Romans 5:20), and this reality of hearts of flesh can be ours if we will only cooperate with that grace. Let's try to imitate the leper about whom we read in today's Gospel. Let us come before Jesus bringing with us all from which we need healing and trust and his desire to make us clean.
Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand,
touched the leper, and said to him,
“I do will it. Be made clean.”
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