God, A Disciplinarian Who Never Abandons His Children

In today’s first reading, Isaiah 10: 5-7, 13b-16, God, like  any good parent who disciplines his/her child when that child acts against the parents’ will, so, too, God disciplines us when we do not obey. He  uses Assyria to discipline the Israelites for their disobedience.   In the words of   Psalm 94 of today’s liturgical celebration, the Chosen people have trampled upon the poor: “[w]idow and stranger they slay, the fatherless they murder. And they say, ‘The Lord sees not; the God of Jacob perceives not.’”   Throughout the Old Testament, whenever the people strayed  from the laws of God, the Lord allowed other nations to overtake them. In today’s reading, Assyria is the instrument used by God to bring His people back to living righteously, honorably and humbly, caring for one another, acting justly and lovingly toward the poor and oppressed of the land.  Assyria boasts, saying “by my own power I have done it (conquered Israel), and by my wisdom, for I am shrewd.  I have moved the boundaries of peoples, their treasures I have pillaged, and, like a giant, I have put down the enthroned.” In other words, Assyria also insults the Lord God and is likewise disciplined by God in His efforts to turn people back to living honorably as instruments in God’s hand.  God alone is the Lord. God is Master of the Universe, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier of us all.

As of old, so, too, today. God uses every circumstance of our lives to redeem us, make us holy, righteous, just, caring, loving, and forgiving toward one another, treating all as brothers and sisters in the Lord.  As we stray from the path of goodness, justice, and humility, do we, like our ancestors in the Old Testament say , in the words of the psalmist, “The Lord sees not; the God of Jacob perceive not?”  If so, we, too, need to hear the next few verses of Psalm 94, where God says to us: “Understand, you senseless ones among the people; all, you fools, when will you be wise? Shall he who shaped the ear not hear: or he who formed the eye not see? Shall he who instructs nations not chastise, he who teaches …[humankind] knowledge? For the Lord will not cast off his people, nor abandon his inheritance; but judgment shall again be with justice and all the upright of heart shall follow it” (Ps. 94).

Is it possible that all of the disasters throughout the world are God’s way of disciplining us and bringing us to the point of acknowledging who, really, is God and who is not?  Are we being given wakeup calls and not hearing, not listening?