Be careful that none of you has an evil and unfaithful heart and falls away from the living God › Heb 3, 12.
Liturgical reading from the Letter to the Hebrews (Hebrews 3.7-14) warns the Christian community of the danger of „slipping to the corruption of the heart“. These words apply to all members of the Church, including priests, sisters, and bishops. There are three words, three threats to the heart, against which God’s word warns: hardness, stubbornness, and succumbing to seduction. We can ask ourselves: Do I have a hard heart? Do I have an inaccessible heart? Am I making my heart grow? Am I afraid of its growth? It always grows through trials and difficulties; it grows, like all of us, since childhood: we learn to walk by falling. How many times have we lost while we went from toddling to stepping? But through difficulties, it grows. The hardness of the heart is related to its closure. This attitude is harmful, and it is small-mindedness. Small-mindedness is an ugly attitude in a Christian; he lacks the courage to live. It closes. He’s small-minded.
The blunt warning in the Letter to the Hebrews reading is before “hardening” heaven with „spiritual stubbornness. “ Such an attitude was blamed on St. Stefan by those who stoned him. It is the attitude of “ideologists” that “conceited” Ideology is a burden. God’s Word, the grace of the Holy Spirit, is not an ideology: it is a life that allows you to grow, to keep moving forward, and also to have your heart open to the signs of the Spirit, the signs of the times. But stubbornness is also conceit; it’s pride. It is stubbornness, that stubbornness, that does so much evil. Stubborn and stubborn, as the text says, these are ideologues. But don’t I have a stubborn heart? Let’s all think. Am I able to listen to other people? And if I have a different opinion, I say: „Well, I’m of this opinion…“ Am I able to discuss this? Stubborn people don’t discuss, they don’t know because they always defend themselves with ideas, they are ideologues. And how much evil do ideologies do to God’s people? How much evil! Because they prevent the action of the Holy Spirit.
About the third is a dangerous attitude of succumbing to seduction and mutilation. It is an avalanche to reach a kind of compromise and simultaneously be on both sides. Yes, I follow the Lord, but I like this seduction, so just a little… And you start living a double life as a Christian. Let’s use the word that the great Elijah said to the people of Israel at a particular moment: „ You cry on both legs. “ Limp with both legs, and neither is firm. That’s a life of compromise. – „Yes, I’m a Christian, I follow the Lord, yes, but I leave this and this is a pass…“ – And these are the lukewarm ones who always compromise: Christians compromise. We too often do it: a compromise. When the Lord shows us the way, both with the commandments and with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, I like this and try to follow two tracks, limping on both feet.
