Word to the Wise
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 - Tuesday in the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
[Genesis 19:15-29 and Matthew 8:23-27]Thus it came to pass: when God destroyed the Cities of the Plain, he was mindful of Abraham by sending Lot away from the updeaval by which God overthrew the cities where Lot had been living.
The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah has some parallels with the story of Noah. God resolves to destroy a bad situation and save only a remnant. We know the situation was bad from the story of Abraham's bargaining with God over the fate of the cities. God says that the cities would be saved if even ten good people could be found. All that survive are Lot and his wife and daughters, and the wife learns another lesson about disobedience when she looks back! It may well be that this story is intended to point out the comparison between Abraham and his people and those of surrounding cultures. Yet it also highlights something that our own times and more ancient times suggest to us. No culture is destined to exist forever. Cultures rise and fall, which is why archaeologists are able to have a fascinating vocation. Occasionally the artifacts suggest that a culture lost its will to live and became corrupt. Why did the great Greek and Roman cultures decline? On our own part, we might ask about the price of secularization in which faith is relegated to a strictly private status or else protected not by our notion of separation of church and state but by freedom of speech! Scholars will debate about what is the essential strength of American culture. Pope Benedict XVI has called attention to the way in which faith and civil society are able in the U.S.A. to live side by side in relative peace. I certainly hope so. Otherwise somebody may have to bargain with God about what to do with us. AMEN
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