Tuesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 390

A certain man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman,
who conceived and bore a son.
Seeing that he was a goodly child, she hid him for three months.

Many American Catholic theologians in our seminaries, colleges, and universities are women. They have discovered, stressed, and celebrated the significant role of women in the Scriptures from Eve to Mary and beyond. It is no accident that the Risen Lord was first seen and reported by women. And God certainly planned that women would conspire against Pharaoh to save, foster, and bring to maturity the greatest prophet and lawgiver of the Hebrew people, Moses.

His father, Amram, appears only as a name in the genealogies of Israel, but Moses' mother Jochebed took the initiative to save the child. And then his sister Miriam, who just happened to be standing there in the bulrushes, coyly suggested to the Egyptian princess that a Hebrew woman should nurse the child. The princess, in her turn, surely knew the nurse was Moses' own mother. The three of them, along with the princess's maids, raised the Hebrew boy to manhood right under the pharaoh's nose. 

As Saint Paul would say many centuries later, 

Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God. (I Cor 1:27)

In our world the powerful rule. They can be bigger, louder, or meaner kids on the playground, bullying husbands, emotionally controlling colleagues, insufferable bosses, vicious writers and publicists, irresponsible wealth, or avaricious politicians. But if tyranny persists no tyrant survives very long. For, as Mary the Mother of God -- herself, a great prophet -- said, 

He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones

but lifted up the lowly.

Or, as Psalm 137 says,

I have seen a ruthless scoundrel,

spreading out like a green cedar.

When I passed by again, he was gone;

though I searched, he could not be found. 

And finally, as a comedienne might say, "Wait for it!"

We wait and watch as God guides our actions and assures us his protecting presence.