Tuesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 384

When Ephraim made many altars to expiate sin,

his altars became occasions of sin.

Though I write for him my many ordinances,

they are considered as a stranger’s.

Though they offer sacrifice,

immolate flesh and eat it,

the LORD is not pleased with them.

He shall still remember their guilt

and punish their sins;

they shall return to Egypt.

The prophets Amos and Hosea, writing in the Kingdom of Israel in the ninth century bce, show little willingness to compromise with the split that was already a done deal. Israel would not rejoin the smaller, poorer nation of Judah; they would not recognize Jerusalem as their holy city, despite Solomon's Temple and the Ark of the Covenant. They followed their own king, and built their own shrines to compensate what they had lost when David's kingdom was split in two. The prophets were not appeased. Hosea ominously declared,

"He shall still remember their guilt and punish their sins; they shall return to Egypt." 

They didn't exactly return to Egypt; they were conquered and their shrines were destroyed by Assyria. They might have done better with Egypt. 

There are certainly many ways to interpret this historical epoch and the prophetic writings of that time. Not every interpretation comes from God. When Catholics and Protestants identify themselves as "us-but-not-them," they blame each other for many altars made to expiate sin which become occasions of sin. Some Catholics still think they incur a mortal sin even by attending a wedding in a Protestant Church. Until recently that most unfortunate rivalry served handily to  cover a multitude of sins which have come to light since. There is no need to reproduce the past. 

I think we can read Hosea as a reminder to seek God's will in every circumstance, as our Holy Father Francis urges us. The Israelites of Hosea's day had their own economic and tribal reasons for ignoring the prophets' call. They also had many (false) prophets who supported their misguided way. It fell to history and the Assyrians to prove them wrong. The correct path that we must follow, the way the Lord intends for us, might be no more clear for us than it was for the "lost tribes of Israel." 

In his Apostolic Exhortation "Rejoice and Be Glad (Gaudete et Exsultate), Pope Francis writes,

167. The gift of discernment has become all the more necessary today, since contemporary life offers immense possibilities for action and distraction, and the world presents all of them as valid and good. All of us, but especially the young, are immersed in a culture of zapping... Without the wisdom of discernment, we can easily become prey to every passing trend....

This attitude of listening entails obedience to the Gospel as the ultimate standard, but also to the Magisterium that guards it, as we seek to find in the treasury of the Church whatever is most fruitful for the "today" of salvation. It is not a matter of applying rules or repeating what was done in the past, since the same solutions are not valid in all circumstances and what was useful in one context may not prove so in another. The discernment of spirits liberates us from rigidity, what has no place before the perennial "today" of the Risen Lord. The Spirit alone can penetrate what is obscure and hidden in every situation, and grasp its nuance, so that the newness of the Gospel can emerge in another light. (March 19, 2018)

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