Have you ever been in an argument and just cannot accept you are wrong? Despite an increasing amount of evidence, you won't give in. Will you give Jesus the opportunity to change your heart? Even if doing so causes you to change the way you see the world?. Readings for Today.
Just cannot accept it
It is not always unusual to become involved in an argument that is petty where we continue to argue knowing two things. First, it is not always important. Second, we know that it doesn't matter, because the most important thing is winning.
Despite the works of Jesus, the miraculous cures, the Pharisees simply cannot open their hearts even a little. The just cannot accept that Jesus is the Messiah. To be sure, Jesus is presenting a challenging message. He is providing a new focus of God's presence in life.
We live in a time where we see so many people insisting on their being right that we can understand the Pharisees. We dismiss each other. We insult people who are opposed to our views. At our worst, we might even seek to destroy the other person so that they can no longer bother us.
We see this in the Pharisees with Jesus. We also see this in the first reading in the life of Jeremiah, the prophet who speaks the truth but faces a lot of opposition. We can become stubborn with people like Jeremiah and Jesus because they tell us what we do not want to hear.
Why do we do this? I think behind this inside this attitude is insecurity. We do not want to accept the complexity of the world. We do not want to be challenged. We don't like change, because often it can produce anxiety.
The heart of the spiritual life is the recognition that we are not God. We have to seek to see that in the world, we need to submit to Jesus, not because we are afraid of God's power, but rather because we know God's love for us is unconditional.
Sometimes our life of faith can be simply checking boxes. The Pharisees were often doing this, not because they are bad people, but rather because they saw in the Law the need to follow it perfectly.
But checking boxes, be it with prayer, or good deeds is not enough. It is not the primary goal. The primary goal is to engage in prayer because we love to be in God's presence. We do good deeds because in doing them for others, we see that we are serving Jesus in what we do.
Will you give Jesus the opportunity to change your heart? Even if doing so causes you to change the way you see the world? The gospel shows us that one hangup for the Pharisees is that they think Jesus is from Galilee, since he grew up in Nazareth. This belief about Galilee prevents them from seeing anything else.
In today's world there can be similar blind spots that keep us from seeing what it is that Jesus is doing. We can struggle with recognizing that faith is an important component to knowledge. Some can only accept reason alone.
St. Thomas Aquinas thought that theology was faith seeking understanding. It can be the case for some that reason can be thing very thing that leads a person to accept the faith. But it seems that once we accept Jesus in faith, we see reason as the faculty that enables us to accept those things we simply cannot prove using only our reason.
In the end, the season of Lent is about our trying to imitate Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Not my will, but your will be done.
