Throughout the Gospels when people do not believe or agree with Jesus, He accuses them of having hard hearts. He uses that term often in the context of the Pharisees. Generally He seems to use the term to suggest that someone's mind is made up, that they are self-righteous, that they are not open to persuasion or to the action of God's Word or to grace. Today Jesus even applies that term-- hardness of heart-- to the 11 remaining apostles (Mk 16: 9-15) who did not believe Mary Magdalene when she reported she had seen the risen Christ, and who did not believe the travelers to Emmaus when they said they had walked and eaten with the risen Christ. Jesus rebukes the Eleven "for their unbelief and hardness of heart." So we might wonder what this "hardness of heart" is all about. Is it a constant condition, or does it depend on the circumstances and the issues? How common is it, and what might we do about it, since it seems like Jesus names the condition of a "hard heart" as a fundamental impediment to spiritual growth? I suppose the fact that the Eleven had hard hearts with respect to the Resurrection might suggest that hardness of heart is situational. Certainly the apostles believed in the reality of Jesus' miracles, and did not think He was possessed by a devil. They went out and fed the poor, and even worked miracles themselves. They couldn't always be in the condition of having their hearts hardened. But when it came to believing that Christ had risen from the dead, they had hard hearts. They couldn't buy it. It wasn't possible. They had their view of how things worked in the world, and that was that. I'm guessing their reaction to the testimonies of Mary Magdalene and the travelers to Emmaus was a combination of arrogance, stubbornness, pride, superiority and a certain pity. "You silly fools," they probably thought, "how could you think such things. We know Jesus is dead-- we saw Him on the cross. How stupid and naive you are to imagine you saw Him. You must be wrong, and are deceiving yourselves." And so, with that toxic mix of ego-driven responses, they closed themselves off from the possibility of Jesus' resurrection. There's a lot of hard-heartedness out there these days. To be called "soft hearted" is something of a criticism. It seems to mean that you're an easy mark, and get taken advantage of. Maybe you're even a bit dim. The world seems to value the hard hearted. They're the successful ones, the ones who get what they want, the people in charge. It is a kind of sickness which seems to have become an epidemic. All of us can get it. We find ourselves relying solely on our intellect, and feeling like we're better than others. We conclude there is no need to consider what others are saying because we're right. Our minds are made up, so don't bother us with the facts. If we find ourselves thinking that way, we might be succumbing to hard heart disease. It doesn't have to be permanent-- the Apostles recovered from it, after all-- but while it lasts, it seems to be fatal to the operation of grace. Maybe one antedote is humility. If you think about it, when folks in the Bible are being hard-hearted, they are never humble. To the contrary, they are acting out of a real sense of self-importance. Humility orders us correctly toward the Divine, and towards one another. It allows us to get past ourselves and experience new things, feel different emotions, acknowledge truths that seemed impossible. Humility opens our hearts to grace. As we reflect on the reality of Jesus' death and resurrection, how can we not be humble?