Walk the Talk

In today’s first reading, Micah 6: 1-4, 6-8, we continue to hear, through the prophet, how the people of God had gone astray and then proceeded to offer “burnt offerings, with calves a year old,….thousands of rams, with myriad streams of oil….” In the responsorial psalm of today’s liturgy, Ps. 50,  we are given the same message:   “Why do you recite my statues, and profess my covenant with your mouth, though you hate discipline and cast my words behind you?”  You have been told,” Micah says to the people, “what is good, and what the Lord requires of you:  Only to do the right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.”   How saddened God must be today when, looking down upon the earth, God sees the many ways in which we have forgotten this message and tossed discipline out of the window, the discipline, that is, of doing “the right,” loving “goodness,” and walking “humbly” with our God! If we did that, would planes be shut down anywhere in the world, would nations war against one another,  would children, youth and young adults be sold into the labor slave markets or into human trafficking, drug trafficking? Would parents be contemplating killing the child in its mother’s womb? Would corrupt politicians or corrupt anyone be considering ways to cheat the poor and oppressed, the marginalized and peoples of so-called minority cultures?

“When you do these things,” God asks through Psalm 50, “shall I be deaf to it? Or do you think that I am like yourself? I will correct you by drawing them up before your eyes.…[Those who] offer praise [the praise of doing “the right” and loving “goodness” and walking “humbly” with God] as a sacrifice glorif[ies] God; and to…[those who go] the right way I will show the salvation of God.”