Pope: We are "Catholic Atheists" if we have
hardened hearts
(Vatican Radio) Listen to the Word of God to avoid the risk
of a hardened heart. That was Pope Francis’ message in his homily at morning
Mass at Casa Santa Marta on Thursday. The Pope pointed out that when we turn
away from God and are deaf to His Word, we become unfaithful or even “Catholic
atheists.”
Pope Francis drew inspiration from the First Reading from
the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah to meditate on the importance of listening to
the Word of God. “When we do not stop to listen to the voice of the Lord we end
up moving away, we turn away from Him, we turn our backs. And if we do not
listen to the voice of the Lord, we listen to other voices.”
The Holy Father suggested that if we do not listen to God’s
voice, then in the end we listen to the voices of idols. He noted bitterly that
eventually, “we become deaf: deaf to the Word of God.”
“And all of us, if we stop a little today and look at our
hearts, we will see how many times – how many times! – we close our ears and
how many times we have become deaf. And when a people, a community, but we can
also say a Christian community, a parish, a diocese, when they close their ears
and become deaf to the Word of the Lord, they search for other voices, other
lords, and it ends with idols, the idols of the world, the worldliness that
society offers. That community distances itself from the living God.”
If the heart hardens, we become “Catholic pagans”, even
“Catholic atheists.” As we move away from the Lord, the Pope added, our hearts
harden. When someone “does not listen, the heart becomes harder, more closed in
on itself, hard and unable to receive anything; not only is it closed: there is
a hardness of heart.” That person lives “in that world, that atmosphere that
doesn’t do him good. He moves further away from God every day.”
“And these two things – not listening to the Word of God and
a hardened heart, closed in on itself – cause infidelity. You lose your sense
of fidelity. The Lord says in the First Reading: ‘faithfulness is gone’, and we
become unfaithful Catholics, Catholic pagans or, uglier still, Catholic
atheists, because we have no reference to the love of the living God. To not
listen and to turn our backs – that makes our hearts harden – takes us on the
road to infidelity.
The Pope then asked, “This infidelity, how does it end?” He
answered by referring to the Gospel passage from St Luke, in which Jesus is
accused of healing people through the power of Beelzebul. “It ends in
confusion; you do not know where God is or where He is not, you confuse God
with the devil.”
His Holiness said we should ask ourselves whether we really
listen to the Word of God or whether we harden our hearts. “This is blasphemy.
Blasphemy is the final word on this path that begins with not listening, with
the hardening of the heart.” This failure to listen and this hardening of the
heart “leads to confusion, making you forget fidelity and, ultimately,
blaspheming.”
To those who forget the wonder of the first meeting with
Jesus, he said: “Each of us can ask ourselves today: ‘Have I stopped listening
to the Word of God, taking the Bible in my hands and talking only to myself?
Has my heart been hardened? Am I far from the Lord? Have I lost my fidelity to
the Lord and do I live with the idols that offer me worldliness every day? Have
I lost the joy of the wonder of my first meeting with Jesus?’. Today is a day
to listen. ‘O that today you would listen to His voice! Harden not your
hearts!’’. We ask for this grace: the grace to listen so that our hearts will
not be hardened.”
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