In today's first reading, Isaiah 1: 10, 16-20, the prophet is speaking to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, begging them to "cease doing evil; learn to do good. Make justice your aim," Isaiah says to them: "redress the wronged, hear the orphan's plea, defend the widow. Come now, let us set things right, says the Lord. Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow; though they be crimson red, they may become white as wool."
Those same words are addressed to us, the citizens of today's world: Cease doing the evil of human trafficking. Make justice toward the poor and the oppressed our aim. Hear the plea of orphans, refugees, and undocumented immigrants brought here to the United States as children. Defend our children. Listen to the outcry of our young people for reasonable laws that ban the use of automatic weapons. Isaiah invites us to "set things right" with one another and with our God! Now is the time to turn from evil and do good as individuals, as a nation, as a people whom God is waiting to save for all eternity. Will we heed God's voice expressed above? Isaiah issues the following warning to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah: "If you refuse and resist, the sword will consume you: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken."
In today's responsorial psalm God poses the following questions: Why do you recite my statutes, and profess my covenant with your mouth, though you hate discipline and cast my words behind you? When you do these things, shall I be deaf to it? Or do you think that I am like yourself? I will correct you by drawing them up[the sacrifice of goats] before my eyes. He [She] that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me; and to him [or her] that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God."
Help us, Lord, heed the voice of the prophets of old and of our day, as well, lest we, too, perish by the sword, by famine and war, by the onslaught of natural disasters!
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