In today's first reading, 2 Chronicles 24: 1-25, we learn that another king of Israel departed from the Covenant made with the people that there is only one God and that they are God's chosen people called to be faithful. No strange or alien gods were to be worshipped or served in God's place. Under King Joash the people "forsook the temple of the Lord, the God of their [ancestors--Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), and began to serve the sacred poles and the idols; and because of this crime of theirs, wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem. Although prophets were sent to them to convert them to the Lord, the people would not listen to their warnings." When "the Spirit of God possessed Zachariah, son of Jehoiada the priest," and he confronted the people's transgressions, asking them why they have been abandoning the Lord, he was put to death. As he was dying, he prayed: "May the Lord see and avenge."
Is it possible that people who are being treated unjustly anywhere in the world, who are victims of wars of any kind, who are being oppressed, abused, hunted down as"prey," treated as animals, pray" "May the Lord see and avenge"?
May our eyes, and the eyes of world leaders, be open to times when we abuse others, deny them their rights to be heard and treated with fairness! May our ears be open to the prophets that God sends to warn us of wrongdoing and to challenge us to return to the one true God, our Lord and Savior. When we go astray, may we return to the right path, knowing that God, as we pray in today's responsorial psalm, Psalm 89, has "made a covenant" with us, his chosen ones, and that this covenant to love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves stands "firm forever." The psalmist, a prophet of God, so to speak, warns us that if we "forsake [God's] law and walk not according to [God's] ordinances, if [we] violate [God's] statues and keep not [God's] commands, punishing consequences will follow as the result of our violations of justice, mercy and not loving others as God loves us.
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