Today’s first reading, Amos 2: 6-10, 13-16, speaks of how
offensive it is to God that we worship idols and forget the commandments of
love, justice and mercy; how offensive to God that we renege on the commitments
we made to God through the sacraments of baptism, First Communion, First
Confession, marriage, ordination or first profession of vows as religious. You “sell
the just…for silver, and the poor…for a pair of sandals. [You] trample the heads of the weak into the
dust of the earth (through physical
death or abusive behaviors in word (gossip) and deed) and force the lowly out of the way. Son and
father go to the same prostitute, profaning my holy name….”
That reading applies as much today as in the day of Amos.
Children and women are sold for sex, for body parts, for slave labor in sweat
shops; babies are slaughtered in the womb—their aborted fetuses “trampled”
upon, so to speak. Those labeled “lowly,”—minorities,
handicapped, chronically ill, the elderly, immigrants, the homeless, the
mentally ill--are pushed “out of the way,” some are put in nursing homes and forgotten by many. Members
of the LBGT community are gunned down.
Some ‘fathers and
sons” continue the same promiscuous behaviors before or after marriage. In today’s responsorial psalm, God says to
us: “When you do these things, shall I be deaf to it. Or do you think that I am
like yourself? I will correct you… Consider this, you who forget God.”
“Beware,” God says through the prophet Amos, “I will
crush you into the ground as a wagon crushes when laden with sheaves. Flight shall parish from the swift, and the
strong [person] shall not retain his strength; the warrior shall not save his
life, nor the bowman stand his ground. The swift of foot shall not escape, nor
the horseman save his life. And the most stouthearted of warriors shall flee
naked on that day, says the Lord.”
All of what happens in our day is a message from God, as
in the day of Amos. Will Jesus say to you as he said to the disciples: “You know how to read the face of the sky,
but you cannot read the signs of the times” (Mt. 16:3)?
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