Friday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 411

It is I who deal death and give life.
Close at hand is the day of their disaster,
and their doom is rushing upon them!
Surely, the LORD shall do justice for his people;
on his servants he shall have pity.

Nahum, the prophet of today's first reading, condemned the Assyrian capital of Nineveh for its crimes against Israel and Judah. The American Catholic Bishops' website has a brief, helpful explanation for the prophet's enthusiastic hatred of the doomed city: 

Shortly before the fall of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, in 612 B.C., Nahum uttered his prophecy against the hated city. To understand the prophet’s exultant outburst of joy over the impending destruction it is necessary to recall the savage cruelty of Assyria, which had made it the scourge of the ancient Near East for almost three centuries. The royal inscriptions of Assyria afford the best commentary on Nahum’s burning denunciation of “the bloody city.” In the wake of their conquests, mounds of heads, impaled bodies, enslaved citizens, and avaricious looters testified to the ruthlessness of the Assyrians. Just such a conquest was suffered by Israel, when its capital Samaria fell to the Assyrians in 722/721 B.C., and by Judah, when its capital Jerusalem nearly fell to invading Assyrian armies twenty years later. Little wonder that in 3:19 Judah is shown as joining in the general outburst of joy over the destruction of Nineveh!

Given the horrifying images we have seen out of Syria, the direct descendent of Assyria, we can well imagine the glee of the Jews in Jerusalem. The more things change, the more they stay the same. 

If Damascus were destroyed, we might say of her what Nahum said of Nineveh: 

Nineveh is destroyed; who can pity her?

Where can one find any to console her?” 

I have known some Christians who suppose they have no enemies and that warfare is never necessary or good. They have not acted violently toward another human being since their childhood and have never suffered so much as a shove in their adult life. They reject violent passages of the scripture and say they would never feel that way. 

But I've also known young parents who were appalled by their own rage at their rambunctious children. Weary after a long day at work, hungry, lonely, bothered: they lash out at their defenseless children, accusing them of terrible things, sometimes claiming to disown them on the spot. And then they wonder, "Where did that come from? I've never acted like that before! I've never felt this way! What happened to the sweet, adorable person who used to be me?"

The scriptures often comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Those who are too comfortable in their pleasant, inoffensive self-image, believing that butter wouldn't melt in their mouth, see in the "mirror of perfection" an unfamiliar image. And they despise it. 

The Bible may not present history as the modern, scientific historian might want it presented; but it accurately records grief, fear, rage, and suffering. This is who we are in God's sight. Loved, beautiful, vicious, blessed, forgiven.