Word to the Wise
Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - Wednesday in the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
[Hosea 10:1-3, 7-8, 12 and Matthew 10:1-7]Sow for yourselves justice, reap the fruit of piety; break up for yourselves a new field, for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain down justice upon you. [Hosea]
Hosea's words come at the end of a series of images of sowing and reaping. His accusation is that the leadership of Israel has planted the wrong kinds of seeds - seeds that have yielded false crops. The continual tendency of the leadership was to copy neighboring religions that were often based on fertility. The transcendent God of Israel was less convenient and such practices as temple prostitution were strictly forbidden by the religion of Israel, let alone making images such as the "sacred pillars." What could such ancient denunciations say to us now? One thing they warn us about is abandoning the God of ancient revelation who further revealed himself in Jesus Christ in favor of a God of our own designs. What we will wind up with is a worship of our secular culture and all its images of consumerism and unprincipled sexuality as well as its devaluation of life of the vulnerable, whether in the womb or on the borders of our country. If we are looking for God in secularism, we are looking in the wrong place. AMEN