Word to the Wise
Friday, July 10, 2020 - Friday in the 14th Week in Ordinary Time
[Hos 14:2-10 and Matt 10:16-23]Let him who is wise understand these things; let him who is prudent know them. Straight are the paths of the Lord, in them the just walk, but sinners stumble in them. [Hosea] "Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves." [Matthew]
Religious faith can be demanding, as Hosea and Jesus remind us, but it does not require us to abandon common sense! Unfortunately, this is exactly what some folks believe about faith - i.e. that it requires heroic virtue, expressed in austere and extreme physical actions or adherence to rigid codes not found in the sound words of scripture or Tradition of the faith. Compared to what is going on around us, we may think that fidelity to our Tradition requires "heroic" virtue, but Christianity only seems extreme when the surrounding culture has abandoned common sense and creates new idols of money, drugs, violence, or even a course of religious behavior that amounts to a "cult" within the Church!
In the Book of Hosea, it is the wholesale abandonment of the covenant by the northern kingdom that is the target. Why would they abandon the God who loves them to follow idols and lifestyles contrary to the covenant? In the Gospel According to Matthew, the simple but demanding teachings of the Sermon on the Mount will make Christians seem strange in the surrounding culture. One can read St. Paul's letters and understand why Jesus says a believing Christian may seem at times like a sheep among wolves!! The shrewdness that Jesus calls for does not require "selling out" to a secular anit-Christian culture. It means learning how to best bear witness to the integrity of faith. Common sense is the voice of the Spirit. It may require gentle but firm measures to achieve effective witness. Zeal that lacks wisdom is dangerous stuff! AMEN