[00:00] If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. We know from the story of St. Francis, when at one time he was preaching and the people he was preaching to were not paying attention, they were not listening to what God had given them to hear through St. Francis.

[00:31] So he began to preach to the birds and he said basically, "You know, let God judge between me and you." "Even the birds, if you do not want to listen to what I have to say, then the birds will." And he began preaching to the birds and they all gathered on a tree listening to him speak. Then you have the contemporary of St. Francis, the great St. Anthony of Padua, who encountered

[01:02] the same thing when he was preaching at one point. So he went to the water's edge, turned his back on the crowd and said the same thing as St. Francis, that if you don't listen to me, then the fish will listen to me. So he began preaching and all the fish in the lake came up to where he was preaching and they were as if they were listening to him, like a whole school of fish. And then you have other examples as well, where the people harden their heart at the

[01:38] preaching of the word of God, but our Lord himself in the reading, the first reading from the book of the prophet Micah, actually does sort of the same thing. He convenes almost like a court of law, and it's not the first time He does this. We know in the book of Job, when Job and his friends were going back and forth on the theology behind the problem of suffering, and they were trying to figure out, you know, whether

[02:12] Job was suffering what he was suffering because of God's punishment, because something he did wrong, and God finally, you know, spoke to all of them, and He used all of creation as His witness. He said, "Were you there when I created the foundations of the world?" "Were you there when I set the boundaries of the sea?" And He went through all of creation, of all the things that He had made, as a witness

[02:43] to His goodness, and as a witness to the requirement of faith that He was asking of Job and Job's friends, because we know that the goodness of God is shown through His creation. St. Bonaventure talks about two different books by which we can learn about God, and the first is through God's direct revelation to man, through what we call normally revelation

[03:13] to the prophets, through the scriptures, but also the book of nature, by which we can see the works of God, and even the Greeks, Greek philosophers were able to come to even the slight natural knowledge of God through the works of creation. So God convenes a court, and He asks the hills and the mountains to hear His plea, to witness the plea or the cause He has brought against His people of Israel.

[03:51] So He is entered into trial with Israel, and He asks His people, "What have I done to you, or how have I wearied you?" He reminds them of everything that He had done, and all the proofs that He had given, especially in leading them out of Egypt, and how He took care of them in His providence and His love and His goodness, even when they were being punished for not entering into the land of Canaan. He provided for them while they wandered, even in the punishment, wandering in the desert

[04:23] for 40 years. So our Lord wants to remind them that it is not bullocks, burnt offerings, and thousands of rams with a myriad streams of oil that He wishes, but that He wishes a contrite heart, just as we hear in the hallelujah antiphon, "If today you hear his voice, harden not your

[04:54] hearts." So we know that one of the reasons why God, in a way, brings creation into this trial is because it seems that everything in the world follows the design that God made for it, that everything follows that which God, the purpose for which it was made. But when it comes to man, even in the beginning, the angels, that when we are given

[05:25] freedom, our hearts are easily hardened, and we turn away from that purpose which God has created us for. And that purpose is always for our better good. That purpose is always for our fulfillment, not for God's. So when the scribes come to our Lord, asking, or not even asking, telling our Lord, "Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you," He said to them in reply, "An evil and unfaithful

[05:56] generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah the prophet." So He gives them the sign of His resurrection. And even when He's correcting them, He's still giving them, you know, an abundance of proof for His existence, for Him being God and having that authority. So an evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign. The reason why is because He had already given them so many signs.

[06:28] He had seen, they had been witness to everything that He did, and yet they still did not believe. And as Fulton Sheen once said, that for those who believe, no proof is necessary, but for those who do not believe, no proof is sufficient. So God is speaking to their hearts because that is the source of their unbelief. They refuse to believe, and that is their great sin, is a refusal to believe in our

[07:04] Lord in the face of all the proofs that He has given. And we too, in our lives, we do not want to harden our hearts. We have been given all the signs from the Old Testament. We have been given all the signs that our Lord gave Himself. We have been given the resurrection. We have been given the Church and its authority. We see the sign even in the 2,000 years of history of the saints and the works that they

[07:37] were able to accomplish through the life of God within them, works that would be impossible naturally speaking. So when we think of everything that our Lord has done for us and His goodness that is displayed every day through creation, through us being alive, through the history of the Church, we should be grateful and know that if we follow Him, He has already given us exactly

[08:10] what we need to do in order to be considered upright. And if we are upright, He will show us His saving power. He says through the prophet Micah that you have been told, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you, only to do right, to be upright, and to love goodness, the goodness that we see coming from the book of nature and also the book of Revelation,

[08:46] the words that our Lord God has given us through the prophets and in the fullness of time through His Son, and to walk humbly with your God, to use our reason not to oppose God, but to bend our wills to His direction. And we know one last story of St. Anthony, the same St. Anthony I was talking about before.

[09:18] Once when he was arguing with someone who did not believe in the Eucharist, he decided to challenge him and he said, "You know, come meet me at this certain time." And all the townspeople were there when the challenge was given. And he said that he would prove the Eucharist to this man. So they brought, St. Anthony had a donkey brought out and they had kept it without food for the whole day. So when he brought this donkey out, he also came out with the Eucharist and the man that

[09:51] was in disbelief was there in the piazza in the town square. And they brought him food for the donkey and they laid it out in front of the donkey while St. Anthony was processing by with the Eucharist. And he went in front of the donkey with the monstrance, and instead of going for the food, the donkey knelt down in front of the monstrance and St. Anthony said, "See, even a donkey can recognize that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist."

[10:24] And the man actually converted at that sign. So let us not be like the people that were being spoken to in the, by the prophet Micah, or the Pharisees who sought signs just for the sake of seeking signs or even just to deny them again, or the man who had a disbelief in the Eucharist, but let us recognize everything that God has given us in His goodness. Let us praise Him. Let us walk rightly before Him.

[10:55] Let us become like the upright and not hardening our hearts so that we might see even more the goodness and the power, saving power of God.