Friday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 465

Gird yourselves and weep, O priests!
    wail, O ministers of the altar!
Come, spend the night in sackcloth,
    O ministers of my God!
The house of your God is deprived
    of offering and libation.

Periodically, something happens in the supply chain that reminds Americans of how much we rely on an incredibly complicated system of people, machines, and infrastructure to provide our daily bread. It is built with ingenuity and flexibility, but depends on willing, energetic persons to make it work. An unexpected, unanticipated snag can make the beautiful system go haywire in a matter of hours. We have seen terrorists, for no apparent reasons, paralyze entire cities for days at a time.

In a simpler day -- if such a time ever existed -- the Prophet Joel addressed such a crisis when a swarm of locusts, like a day of darkness and of gloom, a day of clouds and somberness, spread like the dawn over the mountains. 

Grain offering and libation are cut off

from the house of the LORD;

In mourning are the priests,

the ministers of the LORD.

The field is devastated;

the farmland mourns,

Because the grain is devastated,

the wine has dried up,

the oil has failed.

However, the alleged perpetrator was not a terrorist but the Lord himself. The prophet could not imagine any other power or authority who might wreak such devastation. There were no alien gods like luck, coincidence, and chance occurrence in his world. Nothing was beyond God's control; nothing could happen that was not the will of God.  Nor does the Lord rule arbitrarily; the fault cannot be in the Lord. There is a reason for infestations and other calamities; and the faithful must respond with penance and atonement.  

A secularized Christianity dismisses Joel's theology; it is convinced that a good God can will only blessings. It sees no good in discipline, restrictions, and punishment. Tragedies must be the work of another, unnamed god who might be karma or fate, and even the Devil. Or they're the unfortunate consequences of poor planning. However, when sorrows overwhelm this shallow understanding of God -- as they did in biblical times -- that secular Christianity loses its savor and is thrown out and trampled underfoot. 

The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that the Lord disciplines those whom he loves and urges us to trust in God especially when our economic and governmental systems fail: 

My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord

or lose heart when reproved by him;

for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines;

he scourges every son he acknowledges.” Hebrews 12:6

Every human-made system must fail eventually, and those which are not scrupulously maintained fail sooner. But our God does not fail us. That is the insistent teaching and enduring content of our scriptures; that is the core of faith. Any fool can believe in God when things are going well; the faithful trust in the Lord who carries the cross with us. He does not fail or disappoint us. 

We accept good things from the Lord, and should we not accept evil?

The Lord gives; the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. (Job)