Without Jesus the Redeemer it is inevitable to "harden the heart" - Without Christ, we are nothing

Today's Gospel Reading (Luke 6,6-11)
On the sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach, 
and a man was there whose right hand was withered. 
The scribes and the Pharisees were watching him to see if he would cure a man 
on the sabbath, hoping to find something to use against him. 
But he knew their thoughts; and he said to the man with the withered hand, 
‘Stand up! Come out into the middle.’ And he came out and stood there. 
Then Jesus said to them, ‘I put it to you: is it against the law on the sabbath 
to do good, or to do evil; to save life, or to destroy it?’ 
Then he looked round at them all and said to the man, 
‘Stretch out your hand.’ He did so, and his hand was better. 
But they were furious, and began to discuss the best way of dealing with Jesus.


Without Jesus the Redeemer it is inevitable to 

"harden the heart"

Today, we all —Jews and non-Jews— must make a firm resolution:
we have to "die to ourselves" and recognize Jesus the Redeemer.
Without God man does not explain himself and falls into absurdity
and contradictions. It is then inevitable to "harden the heart",
rejecting any self-knowledge and denying our own guilt,
unless there is "Someone" who also carries this guilt, who "develops" it
and who forgives it.

There occurs a reciprocity here: without the idea of the Redeemer —
who does not conceal His guilt, but suffers it— we cannot bear the truth
of our own guilt and we appeal to the first deception:
our blind obstinacy in front of this guilt, from which all other deceptions
are born, to end up with our total incapacity to face the truth.
And conversely: it is not possible to know the Redeemer and
believe in Him without the courage to be honest with ourselves.

—O Lord, I ask you the grace of the "confession" to recognize the truth:
yours (I need You!) and mine (I am not "God", but a weak creature!).