Thursday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time
To know something “by heart” is to know it so well that you don’t have to see it written down in order to remember it. I recall memorizing piano pieces when I was a young girl and being able to play them without the music. It wasn’t just that I had memorized the notes printed on the page, but that I knew it so well that I could play it and feel it without having to think very hard about it, as if it were part of me. In fact, sometimes “thinking” about it too much would mess me up; it was better if I just played it “by heart” and let my fingers go where they knew to go.
I thought of this as I read today’s first reading (Jeremiah 31: 31-34) in which the Lord is talking about making a new covenant with the house of Israel, “I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts…No longer will they have need to teach their friends and relatives how to know the Lord.”
It sounds almost instinctual to me, that God’s law will be known in the hearts of the people without having to be taught or read; they will know it “by heart.” In a similar way, in today’s gospel from Matthew (16: 13- 23), Jesus blesses Simon Peter for confessing that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus points out that this was not revealed to Simon Peter by “flesh and blood”, meaning by human beings, but by “my heavenly Father.” Simon Peter was listening to his “heart” and responding to what God had revealed to him.
Interestingly, at the end of this gospel reading in the passage following Jesus naming Peter (which means “rock”) as the one on whom he will build his church, we are shown how Peter is perhaps not always in tuned to God and what is “written on his heart”. The author of Matthew tells us that Jesus began to reveal to his disciples that he was to suffer and be killed and then be raised on the third day. When Peter, speaking out of his very human fears and love for Jesus, exclaimed, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you,” Jesus responds harshly to Peter, “Get behind me Satan!” The one, whom Jesus had named as Rock of the church, is now being called Satan for being an obstacle to Jesus. “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” (vs.23)
I can understand where Peter is coming from in his reaction to what Jesus was revealing to the disciples, but it’s also a reminder to us to listen to God’s voice and words within us, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal God’s truths to us and open our hearts to God’s ways, rather than our own ways. And isn’t it reassuring to know that even Peter, Rock of the church, didn’t always get it right? (Remember, he was also the one who denied Jesus three times.)
God uses us in our humanity and, thankfully, that includes in our weakness. Let us take quiet time in prayer and in reading the Scriptures to strengthen our connection with God and keep us in tuned in so that we can hear God’s voice and know God’s way in our heart and “by heart.”
-Eileen Miller