Overcoming the odds

In today’s first reading, 2 Kings 22: 8-13; 23: 1-3, the high priest Hilkiah found the book of the law in the temple of the Lord. When  king Josiah heard the book of the law read aloud, He tore his garments as he realized that his ancestors violated God’s covenant. He gathered all of the people in the Temple and had the entire book of the law read to them.  The king renewed their commitment to the law of God and to being faithful to the covenant God had made with the people of Israel. 

Josiah is eighteen years of age. The example given him by both his grandfather, Manasseh, and his father Amon is horrible. Both were violent men. Both, as rulers of the Jewish people, led the people into idol worship and occult practices.  Their reign was corrupt to its very core.  Manasseh even murdered his own son. Amon follows in his father’s footsteps and eventually is himself murdered. Josiah breaks this pattern of corruption  and violence, of immorality and dishonesty.  He reverses the pattern of disobedience and disrespect for the law of God.

You and I also face decisions every day of choosing to follow a path of virtue or one that leads to corruption, or as Jesus states in today’s Gospel, following true prophets or false prophets.  We can engage in behaviors that corrupt or sustain a life of  virtue.  Like Josiah, we have the power to break bad habits and to reverse long-standing patterns around us. That power comes from the Word of God, the sacraments, the Eucharist, holy reading, the example of those who are faithful to God and the voice of the Good Spirit quietly guiding us in the depth of our hearts. Will we follow this Good Spirit, as Josiah did,  or will be  get swept away by the corruption, the violence, the immorality, the dishonesty, the “idol worship” and “occult practices” in our world, as did Manasseh and Amon? The answer is ours to make!