Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 391

Woe to Assyria! My rod in anger,
my staff in wrath.
Against an impious nation I send him,
and against a people under my wrath I order him
To seize plunder, carry off loot,
and tread them down like the mud of the streets.
But this is not what he intends,
nor does he have this in mind;
Rather, it is in his heart to destroy,
to make an end of nations not a few.

Ancient Assyria, frightened of powerful neighbors and obsessed with security, cultivated a warrior ethos. Their soldiers prepared to kill and maim their enemies with the best weapons they could devise; and, with that accomplished, happily turned to the slaughter of the elderly, women, and children. They intended more than the annihilation of neighboring enemies, they would forcibly march their conquered to distant places while moving other peoples into the now-unoccupied territory. Nor would they permit the conquered to find solace in their religion; they should forget their homeland and heritage, and worship Assyrian gods.

Despite their massive power, Isaiah the prophet saw the Assyrian army only as the Lord's tool, a rod used to punish Israel for its infidelity. Nothing human could stand before the Lord of the Universe whom he had beheld in a vision. He also saw Assyria's arrogance and predicted they would suffer for it. Not only was their punishment of Israel too severe, they foolishly believed they had conquered the invincible God's people by their own power. 

That could not stand.

The divine authors of the Testaments, Old and New, believed that nothing happens which God does not see and permit; and more often it is God's will. When the Hebrews escaped from Egypt it was certainly not by their own power or authority; God himself had made Pharaoh obtuse. He had opened the Red Sea and driven the Egyptian army with all its chariots, horses, and soldiers into liquid annihilation. 

Nothing happens by accident -- then or now. We often remind our children that their mistakes are not accidents; rather, they were careless. Lawyers thrive on foreseeable mistakes and injuries. Only true accidents which could not be avoided or foreseen might be redefined as acts of God. 

We might well ask why these terrible things happen. Why did SCOTUS strip the nation of laws against abortion with Roe v Wade? Was this God's wrath against the nation? Against the innocent? Why did he allow the same court to reverse its decision? And what will happen now? 

But we cannot stop trusting the God who has "hidden these things from the wise and the learned." We know the Lord has not and will not abandon us. By divine inspiration, Wisdom has opposed abortion as a form of birth control since forever; it is an unconscionable crime against our human nature. 

We renew our prayers for God's mercy upon a deeply disturbed and confused nation. The abortion issue has divided us like no issue since the Civil War. It has tainted every national discussion and paralyzed our ability to govern ourselves. Good people on every side could not agree; they spoke the Languages of Babel to one another. 

We beg the Lord to speak a word to the wise among us, to both anti- and pro-abortion parties. For a half-century we have suffered an inability to seek the truth together. By God's mercy we can begin again.