Inspired by my experience at the College for Congregational Development, I'm trying to attend the Morning Prayer offered daily by the Episcopal Diocese of New York. Taking place on zoom, it draws 140-160 people, most of whom (like me) have their cameras off but almost all of whom participate when it comes time for Intercessions, which spill down the zoom chat like a little freshet. We always pray for the release of Ketty De Los Santos, a Peruvian asylum-seeker and beloved member of a church in White Plains abducted by ICE after a routine immigration hearing, and everyone unjustly detained.
Different people from across the diocese preside, read the assigned scripture passages and the Lord's Prayer, and offer a reflection each day, so it offers a pleasing variety of voices. (The Lord's Prayer has been read in Cantonese, Spanish, and a poetic contemporary adaptation.) The reflections are each a gentle jewel, too, introducing us to a range of perspectives and experiences - and preaching styles. As they parse readings, feast days and collects, a common refrain has been the Church's call to witness to true Christian love in this time of injustice and hatred. Today's reflection let us make the connection ourselves.
It would be far more prudent for you to even leave [your occupations] for a time, than suffer yourself to be carried away by them, and certainly by degrees led whither you would not. Do you ask whither? I reply, to a hard heart. Do not further ask what that means; if you have not greatly feared it, it is yours already. That heart alone is hard which does not shudder at itself for not feeling its hardness. Why ask me? Ask Pharaoh. No one ever got his hard heart cured unless God haply took pity on him, and, according to the prophet, removed his heart of stone and gave him a heart of flesh. What then is a hard heart? It is a heart which is not torn by remorse, nor softened by affection, nor moved by entreaties; which does not yield to threats, but is hardened by scourges. It is ungrateful for kindnesses, faithless in counsel, cruel in judgement, shameless in disgrace, without sense of fear in the midst of danger, inhuman in things human, heedless, in things divine; it forgets the past, neglects the present, does not look on to the future. It is a heart emptied of all the past except the wrongs it has suffered, which lets slip all the present, which has no forecast of the future, no preparation to meet it, unless perchance it be with a view to gratifying its malice. (Chapter 2, §3)
Sound like anyone you know?
My fumbling prayers and intercessions have recently included the plea that the hearts of the powerful be changed. And that the rest of us be able to resist their insidious power to make us like them. I guess I've been shuddering at not fully feeling my own hardness of heart... a start.
