In today's first reading, 1 Samuel 4: 1-11, the Israelites are defeated by their enemy, the Philistines. In the first battle, they lose 4,000 men. Astounded that the Lord allowed the Philistines to defeat them, they go to Shiloh to get the ark of the Lord to take into battle with them. The ark of the Lord to the Israelites might be viewed as we Catholics view the Tabernacle. In this second battle, the Philistines defeat the Israelites again, killing 30,000 men. The ark of the Lord was captured as well and Eli's two sons, Hophne and and Phinehas, were among those killed in the fight!
Is it possible that the Israelites relied more upon a religious symbol than upon the Lord's mercy? Do we sometimes rely on our religious traditions and symbols to bring about our victories? The time will come for all of us when all we have is our naked faith, so to speak, and nothing we attempt will work! Totally powerless, we will stand before the Lord in our defeat and say with the psalmist:
"...you have cast us off and put us in disgrace,
and you go not forth with our armies.
You have let us be driven back by our foes;
those who hated us plundered us at will.
You made us the reproach of our neighbors,
the mockery and the scorn of those around us.
You made us a byword among the nations,
a laughingstock among the peoples.
Why do you hide your face,
forgetting our woe and our oppression?
For our souls are bowed down to the dust,
our bodies are pressed to the earth" (Psalm 44 of today's liturgy).
It is very challenging to be faced, at times, with the fact that religious symbols and rituals, even when multiplied many times, may yield no results and we are left standing before our Savior begging the Lord to "redeem us because of His mercy" and not because of our multiplication of religious rituals or our addition of an enormous number of rote prayers (see the response to today's responsorial psalm).F
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