Word to the Wise
Tuesday, August 14, 2018 - Tuesday in the 19th Week in Ordinary Time
[Ezek 2:8-3:4 and Matt 18:1-5, 10, 12-14]It was then I saw a hand stretched out to me, in which was a written scroll which he unveiled before me. It was covered with writing front and back, and written on it was: Lamentation and woe! He said to me: Son of man, eat what is before you; eat this scroll, then go, speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth and he gave me the scroll to eat. Son of man, he then said to me, feed your belly and fill your stomach with this scroll I am giving you. I ate it, and it was a sweet as honey in my mouth. He said: Son of man, go now to the house of Israel, and speak my words to them. [Ezekiel]
AUGUST 14 ST. MAXIMILIAN KOLBE, ofm.conv. Martyr
The vision of the scroll is part of the account of Ezekiel's call to be a prophet. After a vision of "the four living creatures" Ezekiel hears a voice and a hand stretches out with a scroll which Ezekiel is ordered to eat! The scroll tastes sweet but the contents are dire. He is sent to the Jewish people in exile in Babylon and what he will have to say will be difficult. This vision is one of many colorful ones the Ezekiel will share with them and with us! God reminds him over and over again that the House of Israel is a bunch of stiff-necked rebels and will resist him. His task reminds me of the comment by the great Southern writer, Flannery O'Connor who, when asked why she wrote stories with strange and violent people in them, said that she was writing for a culture that is so resistant to God's grace that "for the deaf you shout and for the blind you draw strange and startling figures."
The task faced by anyone engaged in evangelization nowadays is to present God's message to a culture that has, to a large extent, domesticated the message into the civil religion. Political positions become mixed in with faith, and in the Church one continually hears talk about conservative or liberal Catholics in much the same way one hears about Republicans or Democrats. The gospel preached by Jesus is not part of any political ideology. Like Ezekiel, we are called to eat God's word and speak of it to everyone, no matter what their political or religious preferences are. Pope Francis has shaken up a lot of Catholics because what he says threatens their political beliefs or other cultural traditions. We are being sent back to take another bite of that scroll and face the stiff-necked resistance with the word of God. AMEN