Wednesday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 451

I said: "My God, I am too ashamed and confounded to raise my face to you, O my God, for our wicked deeds are heaped up above our heads and our guilt reaches up to heaven. From the time of our fathers even to this day great has been our guilt, and for our wicked deeds we have been delivered up, we and our kings and our priests, to the will of the kings of foreign lands, to the sword, to captivity, to pillage, and to disgrace, as is the case today.



Can you imagine an American politician, or even a Rick Warren-type preacher, making a public declaration like that of the priest Ezra? He would be hounded into oblivion. We are not in the habit of owning our sinful past, much less our deplorable present.
in his prayer, Ezra summarizes the recent history of the Jewish people. They had been a free, independent nation under the Kings David and Solomon, then they were divided into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah. The prophets had consistently warned both nations for many hundred years that God would punish them for their infidelity. But, like every other nation, they had ignored the needs of the poor, orphaned, widowed, and aliens; they had lavished care upon the wealthy and the powerful. They invited punishment and they got it in the form of famines, pestilence, plague and, finally, foreign invasions. Egyptians, Syrians, and Babylonians routinely stomped the miserable kingdoms into the ground and, eventually, into extinction. They had been warned; they would not listen.
Ezra celebrated the mercy of that punishing God who had finally returned some of his disgraced people back to the ruins of Jerusalem and, with the assistance of alien rulers, begun to rebuild God's holy city. He didn't expect the city to become a world power, and it never has. He was satisfied that God had not forgotten them.
Americans who like to think the United States is favored, don't usually invite God's wrath to destroy our cities, eviscerate our wealth, or reduce us to foreign servitude. If we were ever great, they suppose, we can make ourselves great again by despising those who made America great, the refugees whom God loves. Even an atheist would know this is national suicide.
There is a movement afoot to recognize our sinful past and how deeply it still affects us. This effort has roots in our Jewish-Christian tradition. The Catholic Church with its practices of penance -- the sacraments, the penitential seasons, stations of the cross, etc. -- can contribute to this growing awareness. Patriotism is neither stupid nor irreligious; it recognizes and owns our collective guilt.
When true patriots declare, "My country, right or wrong!" they should be prepared to recognize and respond to our national wrongness. Otherwise, it is only bombast, an empty bromide to be spat out and trampled under foot.
The virtue of penance urges us to research and discover how deeply slavery, for instance, still contaminates our way of life. How might we purge our prisons and jails of that diabolical tradition? Penance also urges us to welcome refugees eagerly, and to make generous sacrifices as they settle among us.
The people of Israel and Judah were warned and ignored God's warning. We still have time, but not much.