The Dull of Hearing Church

As Thursday turned into Friday last week, I was in the Palanca Chapel of the Peoria Cursillo Center for an hour of prayer and meditation for the men's Cursillo weekend that had started that evening. That is something I've tried to do every possible Cursillo weekend since I began my Fourth Day in September 1994.

Drawing upon my experience from January, when I found myself reading out loud (I was by myself that time) the entire book of Ephesians, I decided this time to focus the hour on reading through the book of Hebrews. So I brought my Ignatius Bible, which uses the superior RSV translation and read — silently, this time, as I had company.

The edition I have breaks each book into pericopes, that is passages that are brought together that form a single thought or idea or "story." And being caught up (perhaps too much so?) in the internal debates about the teaching of the church body in which I am a Pastor, this pericope struck me (emphasis added):

About this we have much to say which is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need some one to teach you again the first principles of God's word. You need milk, not solid food; for every one who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil. Hebrews 5:11-14