"They will be my people and I will be their God" (Compare Ezekiel 37: 21-28)

In today's first reading, Ezekiel 37: 21-28, God says that He "will take the Israelites back...."  They shall  no longer "defile themselves with their idols, their abominations, and all their transgressions. I will deliver them from all their sins of apostasy, and cleanse them so that they may be my people and I may be their God."  Is that what God is doing through the coronavirus? Is he using this disease to turn us away from our "sins of apostasy," and to cleanse us so that we may be His people and God may be our God forever, and not the idols to which we have come--the accumulation of more and more material things, the multiplication of hedonistic, pleasurable experiences; wealth and the becoming of millionaires and billionaires, dominating and controlling others, being superior to others?

All of us are vulnerable to the coronavirus. No one is exempt. And to overcome this virus, we need to work together as one nation, one people,  one world!  All survive in cooperation with one another or no one survives.  We are called to turn away from the sins of exclusion, domination, control, one person being superior to another, lording it over others and all the sins associating with these behaviors!  God is God. There is no other God but God! May this virus cause us to fall down on our knees to the one true God and beg forgiveness and deliverance from this evil and the evil of of worshiping our egos and not doing what is best for each other in love!

Created to be God's People, God's Beauty, God's Renown, God's Praise

"...[A]s close as the loincloth clings to a man's loins, so had I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord; to be my people, my renown, my praise, my beauty. But they did not listen," we read in today's first reading, Jeremiah 13: 1-11.  That passage also speaks of the nation to which you and I belong.  As a nation, as a country, as a city, as a family we are created to be God's people, God's renown, God's praise, God's beauty. Are we?  The people of Israel and of Judah did not follow God's ways, did not cling to God but sought their security in other gods, idols, worshipped by other countries, other nations, other tribes, other kingdoms!  They, in fact, rejected God as the only true God! Have you? Have I?

In the responsorial verse of today's liturgy, taken from Dt. 32: 18-19, 20, 21,  God very clearly voices His anger, saying to the people of Israel and of Judah: "You have forgotten God who gave you birth."  When God saw their unfaithfulness, the author of Deuteronomy says, "he was filled with loathing."  Angered, God said: I will hide my face from them...and see what will then become of them.  What a fickle race they are, sons [and daughters] with no loyalty in them!"  Is God saying that of our nation, of the country to which you and I belong? Is God saying that of you and me?