Hard Hearts

A Reflection on this Friday’s Gospel (Matthew 19:3-12) - 16 August 2024

     The Lord’s teaching on divorce and remarriage is one of the most hotly contested teachings within Sacred Scripture. It is odd that so many cling tightly to the Lord’s teachings in so many other matters and reject this teaching as, “outdated.” Perhaps, it has to do with the hardness of heart that Jesus talks about today. The “hard heart” is often at the root of many human problems.

     St Thomas Aquinas equates hardness of heart with spiritual blindness and defines it as “the cleaving of the human mind to evil,” “the turning away from the Divine light,” and

“the withdrawal of grace, the result of which is that the mind is not enlightened by God to see aright…” (STh., I-II q.79 a.3 resp.)

     Often, we begin to view a certain hardness of heart as inevitable, the Mount Everest of human nature. It is a difficult climb to reach the mist-covered summit. Scripturally, the most obvious example of the “hard heart” is Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus. We read that God “hardened” Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 7:3). However, St Augustine reflects that Pharaoh’s heart was already willfully infected with evil. He writes,

God makes good use of bad hearts for what he wishes to show to those who are good or those he is going to make good. And the quality of evil in each heart (that is, what sort of heart is disposed to evil) came about through its own evildoing, which grew from the choice of the will. (St. Augustine quoted in Lienhard)

     Pharaoh’s hard heart was his doing alone, his choice! When Jesus talks about our hard hearts as being an obstacle to our own acceptance of the truth, our “hardness of heart” is not imposed upon us but grows out of our own refusal of the truth. It is a self-imposed spiritual blindness, a conscious or unconscious withdrawal from grace.

     Our human inclination toward sin, called concupiscence, results in an organically “hard heart” and is at the root of our willful rejection of truths we don’t like. It is our need to declare that it has to be, “my way or the highway.” The hard-hearted person is the self-declared “smartest person in the room,” who will not change even when truth is clearly evident. Look at Pharaoh who drives his army into the sea chasing the people of Israel even after God demonstrates his omnipotence through plague after plague imposed upon Egypt. (Exodus 14:5–28)

     A hard heart is blind to the needs of others. They don’t matter.  Pharaoh’s heart did not change as he watched the people of Egypt suffer, nor did it break at the loss of his first-born son. Empathy or compassion for others is set aside. Hard hearts are those that seek self-gratification, it is their happiness alone that matters. Yet, they are rarely happy. Their happiness is never really attainable. There is always the need for one more dollar, the desire for a greater level of power, a need for one more complement, or the desire for one more physical gratification.

     The hard heart is blinded by a singular focus on the personal pursuit of money, power, ambition, and pleasure. Those suffering from hardness of heart are often blissfully unaware of their malady, so evident to others. It is a sickness born of pride that leads to death. As we read in the book of Job,

“Though his pride mount up to the heavens and his head reach to the clouds, Yet he perishes forever like the dung he uses for fuel, and onlookers say, “Where is he?” (Job 19:28)

     A hard heart is deadly.

     The cure for a hard heart begins in humility. Humility does not occur naturally but, requires a decision to become, as our Lord described, “poor in spirit.” It is the first of the Beatitudes listed in the Gospel of Matthew because it is foundational. When we recognize our need for God and our own need for obedience to Truth, we open the door for grace. Jesus tells us that “whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Mathew 16:25, Mark 8:5, Luke 9:24) Humility is the recognition that our happiness, can only be found when we give our life to God.

     Today, if you scoff at our Lord‘s teachings on marriage and divorce as unreasonable; ask yourself, “am I suffering from a hard heart?” Divorce is a tragedy which so often arises when one spouse or the other is suffering from the hard heart that Jesus describes. The tragedy is that there is often one spouse whose full heart and faith is bound up in their matrimonial promises, while the other walks away. Pray for God’s grace to be present in every marriage, especially those that are troubled.

     God, grant us the strength to open our hearts with humility that we might exchange our hearts of stone for your heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26)

Endnotes:

Benedict XVI. Homilies of His Holiness Benedict XVI (English). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013. Print.

Lienhard, Joseph T., and Ronnie J. Rombs, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. eds. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001. Print.

St Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. Ed. The Aquinas Institute. Trans. Laurence Shapcote. Vol. 16. Green Bay, WI; Steubenville, OH: Aquinas Institute; Emmaus Academic, 2018. Print.