Fr. Mike's Gospel Reflection for - Sunday, October 5, 2025

“If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

The above phrase is from this weekend’s Responsorial Psalm (Psalm 95). The same language is also found in Hebrews 3:15. The instruction serves as a warning and an encouragement to be receptive to God's word today rather than becoming stubborn or rebellious. It emphasizes that God's invitation to a relationship with Him requires an immediate and willing response. We are warned that, when we harden our hearts, we resist God’s guidance and will face consequences, just as the Israelites in the desert faced consequences for failing to trust God.

Before praying the Office of Readings each day, I recite Psalm 95 which is called the “Invitatory” Psalm reminding me not to harden my heart when I hear the “voice of the Lord.” After repeating this Psalm over 4,000 times since I started seminary formation, I should know how to approach God with a receptive heart. Yet, each day I struggle to fully open my heart to not only hear God’s voice, but to listen to it, to receive it, to accept it, and to act upon it. Hearing is only the first step. Our hearts might be softened enough to hear God’s voice, but they harden pretty quickly when His message directs us to act in a way that conflicts with our own thoughts, dreams, desires, and plans.

How do we know that we are actually hearing God’s voice? After all, it is unlikely to come to us through a burning bush as it did for Moses, or through a cloud on a mountain as it did at the Transfiguration. Admittedly, it can be difficult to hear God’s voice through all the noise and distractions of life. It reminds me of my mother yelling from the front of the house to tell my father something while he was watching a way-too-loud TV in the back of the house. It didn’t work. We are so overwhelmed with the voices of this world that we fail to set aside any quiet time to listen for God’s voice.

A great way to ensure that we hear God’s voice is to take a few moments of silence to clear our minds of the daily grind and to seek Him. Then, we must follow through on what we hear Him saying.

Fr. Mike