Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

The prophet Micah describes a loud, angry lover’s quarrel within the setting of a courtroom. The parties are desperately trying to understand one another, and each thinks the other is wholly unreasonable. We hear a kind of resolution in the closing lines, words that have become very familiar to us:
You have been told, O man, what is good,
and what the Lord requires of you:
Only to do the right and to love goodness,
and to walk humbly with your God.


As simple as that sounds, we have a hard time getting there.
The passage begins with the Lord’s voice, as described by the prophet. God will drag his people before mountains, hills and foundations of the earth to present his case against them. The jury of all creation will surely understand and sympathize with God.
But then God turns and angrily demands of his people, “What have I done to you? How have I failed you?” After everything God has done for his people – which he briefly recounts -- how can they be so pigheaded?
The people reply with increasing irrationality. What does God want? A burnt offering of a year old calf? A thousand rams and rivers of olive oil? My first born son? Is there no pleasing this God?
Which of us has never been swept along in a quarrel like this? Which of us has not appealed to the walls and the furniture to witness her complaints?
Micah accurately describes both a lover’s quarrel and the dilemma we face as we engage in this covenant with God. We’re willing to give so much, but no more. In dealing with God we remember the advice of William Butler Yeats, “Never give all your heart.”
But, unfortunately, we will give all our hearts to the wrong gods – to lovers, spouses, children, parents, pleasures, work, despots, patriotic passions and so forth. These will take all we give and return nothing. But the one who deserves our total worship, who alone is worthy of such worship, who alone can make our supreme sacrifice worthwhile – that one we neglect.
This passage from the Book of the Prophet Micah ends abruptly as the Lord speaks gently and reasonably, with understanding and affection: Here is what I want, only do the right and love goodness and walk humbly with your God.