Thursday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 374

Many will say to me on that day,
‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?
Did we not drive out demons in your name?
Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’
Then I will declare to them solemnly,
‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’

Today's first reading from the Second Book of Kings recounts the fall of Jerusalem under the Babylonian army; historians place it in 597 BC. 

The tragedy seemed inevitable after Jehoiachin, the faithless king with his wicked mother Nehushta, began their reign. They may have observed all the rites of a divinely appointed heir of David but, as the psalmist (Ps 89) had predicted, he and his nation were severely punished:

I will establish his [David's] dynasty forever,

his throne as the days of the heavens.

If his descendants forsake my teaching,

do not follow my decrees,

If they fail to observe my statutes,

do not keep my commandments,

I will punish their crime with a rod

and their guilt with blows. 

But I will not take my mercy from him,
nor will I betray my bond of faithfulness.
I will not violate my covenant;
the promise of my lips I will not alter.
By my holiness I swore once for all: 

I will never be false to David.

As a child in a Catholic school, I was warned about the sin of presumption. We should be grateful we have been baptized and brought into the Church. We should practice our religion with its moral code and ritual observances, but we should never suppose we're automatically bound for heaven. "God owes you nothing!" was the subtext of every teaching. There is nothing automatic about God's love! The law of cause and effect is preempted by the sovereign authority of a personal God. 

We should suppose we are sinners. The teaching was supplemented by a friendlier message of the late 1960's and seventies: "We are beloved sinners." But never uprooted; we are sinners nonetheless. 

That's a hard teaching for a people that has learned to take for granted many entitlements and perquisites, with inherited safety nets and assured second chances. We need to be reminded that bad ideas, opinions, words, and actions have bad consequences. Someone will pay for our sins.

Our world and our Church is compromised by many Judases and antichrists whose lives have been given over to evil. That may not be apparent at first, but it emerges soon enough:

They went out from us, but they were not really of our number; if they had been, they would have remained with us. Their desertion shows that none of them was of our number. (1 John 2:19)

Anyone who is so “progressive” as not to remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God; whoever remains in the teaching has the Father and the Son. (2 John 1:9)

With the Sacrament of Penance Catholic invite and receive God's merciful rebuke. We want to hear his voice, and are delighted when we do hear it, even if it's stern reproval. There's hardly any other sign that is more reassuring!