Word to the Wise
Monday, July 4, 2016 - Monday in the 14th Week in Ordinary Time
[Hos 2:16, 17c-18, 21-22 and Matt 9:18-26]I will espouse you to me forever: I will espouse you in right and in justice, in love and in mercy; I will espouse you in fideiity, and you shall know the Lord. [Hosea]
In 1976, when our country celebrated its 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I was working in campus ministry in Denver, CO. I happened to meet the Catholic chaplain from Petersen Air Force base in Colorado Springs. He invited me to come as a guest speaker to give two presentations on religious elements in the Declaration of Independence and in the U.S. Constitution. It was an interesting challenge because the only explicit mention of God in either of the two documents occurs in the Declaration of Independence and is very general. The Bill of Rights of the Constitution seeks to protect both "religion" and government from each other! The results have been mixed! What these documents do, though, is to declare the American "covenant" and we enshrine them in special "reliquaries" like relics of the saints in a special museum in Washington, DC.. School children learn to recite sections by heart. In short, these two documents are the "gospel" of our civil (secular?) religion.
What we must be very careful about is thinking that we, of all nations, are exceptional in God's sight. Our track record on human rights is not very edifying. Economic disparities, immigration, health care... access to the "American dream" remains elusive for too many in our land. The spousal imagery in Hosea the prophet in today's first scripture shows that God does care for the wayward Israel, and indeed God cares for all of human creation. If we are faithful to our secular civil covenant, we will find ourselves close to the teachings of Jesus, but these teachings transcend all human governmental systems.
Genuine gratitude for the blessings of liberty is certainly appropriate for this day as long as we recognize where the blessings come from and how far we have to go to share them. AMEN
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