Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

"If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.

Over the last few months, as I reflect on the Old Testament prophets and the destruction of Jerusalem, as I try to understand our relationship with God, the word jealous keeps coming to mind.

Our God is a jealous God.

Ordinarily we think of jealousy as a vice, a psychological illness or, at best, a character fault. The word often comes up in the Dear Abby and Annie’s Mailbox columns (which I faithfully read) usually in the form of a complaint. The writers resent the controlling ways of their lovers and spouses; or they confess they find their own jealous impulses unmanageable and fear their consequences.

But the scriptures insist our God is a jealous God:

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation - of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:4-6)

I have also been reading Freethinkers, a history of American Secularism, by Susan Jacoby. She ably defends the principle in the American constitution of disestablishment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; 

In recent years this principle has been sorely tested by the Christian Right, and yet we know it is fundamental to our identity as a free nation. On the other side, secularists and religious liberals have continued to win court cases and public sympathy for the rights of religious and sexual minorities. Our body politic is seriously polarized; and our political system, paralyzed by the debate.

Many of us feel deeply torn between the jealousy of God and the principle of disestablishment.

Like many Catholics, I feel the crisis within my heart. I believe abortion is a heinous crime, and yet I cannot support a constitutional amendment to suppress the practice. Given the tragic story of Prohibition, I cannot imagine laws to prohibit abortion or same sex marriage. Our prisons are already filled with drug dealers and their unfortunate clients, while Mexico, Columbia and Afghanistan collapse under America's demand for illicit drugs. Indeed America has more prisoners than any other nation on earth, and a higher percentage of our population in prison than any other nation on earth. 

G.K Chesterton, the renowned British Catholic writer, once observed, “America is a nation with the soul of a church.” It seems the American church with the constitution of a nation incarcerates infidels in its efforts to please a jealous God.

In today’s gospel I hear the invitation and challenge of Jesus:

"If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.

Several years ago I went to Australia as a missionary. I didn’t last very long. I had to return home as a missionary to my own country. Since then I believe we Catholics and we Christians have been sent to these United States as missionaries, sojourners in a strange land. Respecting the deist principles of the American Constitution, we should not think this is a Christian country. No nation should make such a claim, even if it is prepared to endure the punishing wrath of an angry, jealous God – which ours is certainly not. If the United States were punished as Jerusalem was punished we would blow the world away in a nuclear nightmare of biblical proportions.

We should not expect the nation to form laws by our religious principles, but we should live by them. We should be like yeast in dough and light in darkness. Our children must understand they are expected and called to live as virgins until they are married; and their marriages should be consecrated in a formal Catholic or Christian ceremony. We should generate children in our homes in the natural way, and show special hospitality to those children who might have been aborted because of their birth defects. We should honor the virtue of chastity within and outside of marriage, and the fidelity of marriage even when adultery occurs.

We should welcome the embrace of a jealous God who loves us intensely, discovering in God’s fanaticism devotion and tenderness and joy beyond the world’s imagination. 

Because we are different, we can still make a difference.