Master·evangeli.net
Today's Gospel + short theological explanation
Without Jesus the Redeemer it is inevitable to "harden the heart"
EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)Today, we all —Jews and non-Jews— must make a firm resolution: we have to "die to ourselves" and recognize Jesus the Redeemer. Without God, man does not explain himself and falls into absurdity and contradictions. It is then inevitable that we harden our hearts, rejecting any self-knowledge and denying our own guilt, unless there is "Someone" who also carries this guilt, who "develops" it and who forgives it.
There occurs a reciprocity here: without the idea of the Redeemer —who does not conceal the guilt, but suffers it— we cannot bear the truth of our own guilt and we appeal to the first deception: our blind obstinacy in front of this guilt, from which all other deceptions are born, to end up with our total incapacity to face the truth. And conversely: it is not possible to know the Redeemer and believe in Him without the courage to be honest with ourselves.
—O Lord, I ask you for the grace of the "confession" to recognize the truth: Yours (I need You!) and mine (I am not "God", but a weak creature!).