Monday of the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 383

I will allure her;

I will lead her into the desert

and speak to her heart.

She shall respond there as in the days of her youth,

when she came up from the land of Egypt.

(This post accidentally appeared last Monday, a week early. Oops. It's due today.)

Christians, for whatever reason, have generally avoided erotic readings of scripture, no matter how suggestive some verses might be. If they cannot be avoided at all, then we assume the words refer to the Sacrament of Marriage, that institution with its contained boundaries, restrictions and limits. If the verses describe eager excitement, pleasure or ecstasy we assume they are "spiritual" and may be understood by the spiritually elite, as opposed to the rest of us poor schmucks. Even when we honor the Blessed Virgin Mary we ponder the virginal conception of a baby, rather than the beauty and desirability associated with virginity.

However, the scriptures speak to us in every age and periodically the Holy Spirit blows fresh life into our readings. Or, perhaps, this fool rushes in where angels fear to tread.

Hosea was the first of the Hebrew prophets to imagine the People of God as passionately desired of God. Later prophets -- Isaiah, Ezekiel and Saint Paul -- would pick up the thread. Hosea saw the Lord as an outraged, jealous husband who brought Abraham's descendants out of Egypt and honeymooned with them in the Sinai desert. They were, however, maddeningly distracted. Despite the Divine Husband's promises of freedom, love and prosperous security, they habitually wandered back to their former gods who offered nothing but humiliation and bondage.

When the prophets describe the covenant God initiated with his people, sexual analogies are hard to avoid. God's love is persistent, intense and demanding. Nor does it fade in time. It defies every control that reason might place upon it:

For Love is strong as Death,

longing is fierce as Sheol.

Its arrows are arrows of fire,

flames of the divine.

Deep waters cannot quench love,

nor rivers sweep it away.

Were one to offer all the wealth of his house for love,

he would be utterly despised.

This passage might be about God and the People, or Romeo and Juliet. 

But, despite the lavish invitations of our Sacraments and liturgies, many people turn back to the old gods. In these idols they find only humiliation and bondage. Users curse and swear at these dreadful deities but they cannot tear away from them because, as ephemeral as they are -- alcohol, heroin, lust, greed, pleasure -- they are higher powers, stronger than our so-called "will power." Their pride will not permit them to turn back to One God who loves them. 

Hosea the Prophet railed against his unfaithful wife but he could not stop loving her; out of his heartbreaking experience he has let us see ourselves with God's eyes. We might not know ourselves as achingly desirable; we might suppose those around us are even less attractive. But erotic passages of the Bible remind us of how beautiful we are in God's sight.