Most of today's first reading from HEBREWS is from the psalm that follows it. So we get the whole passage from Psalm 95 twice! And the writer of HEBREWS makes it clear that the warning we repeat in the psalm response -- "If today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts"-- is from the Holy Spirit. He then uses it to exhort his Christian listeners not to let their hearts be hardened by "the deceit of sin," not to have "an evil and unfaithful heart," and to take heed NOW, "while it is still TODAY."

This exhortation certainly prepares us for Ordinary Time, which is really the only time we have.

"NOW is the acceptable time, NOW is the day of salvation." It's not surprising that great spiritual writers like the French Jesuit, de Caussade, in his classic, Abandonment to Divine Providence, and, more recently, Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now, put awareness of the present moment as the very essence of the spiritual journey. De Caussade even speaks of "the sacrament of the present moment." So, backed by the authority of great spiritual masters, I urge all of us today to a simple contemplative experience of remaining quietly present to God for as long as we can! And since the first two readings remind us of the importance of not letting our hearts go astray or be hardened, I recommend that you focus, in this exercise, on your own heart. And I mean, quite literally, your physical heart --where it is in your body, it's beating, and its connection with everything you feel and love. For, unhardening our hearts is what it's all about. Furthermore, "everything we feel is God's will for us," according to another great spiritual writer, Abbot Chapman.

How about trying this next? The leper in today's Gospel is healed by the touch of Jesus' s hand.

Why don't we, in our prayer today (begging Jesus as the leper did) allow ourselves or try to imagine ourselves being touched in our hearts (which always need the most healing) by Jesus while we hear him say, "I do will it. Be made clean." Then with clean hearts we can rejoice and enter into his rest! And we will then also be fully able to do what the author of HEBREWS reminds us is our true calling as disciples: becoming partners of Christ.