God's Inheritance Is Never Abandoned

In today's first reading, Isaiah 10: 5-7, 13b-16, Assyria is a "rod in anger" and God's "staff in wrath". Through the prophet  Isaiah, God says: "Against an impious nation I send him, and against a people under my wrath I order him to seize plunder, carry off loot, and tread them down like the mud of the streets. But this is not what he [the empire of Assyria] intends, nor does he have this in mind: rather,  it is in his heart to destroy, to make an end of  nations not a few. For he says: 'By my own power I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I am shrewd. I have moved the boundaries of peoples, their treasures I have pillaged, and, like a giant, I have put down the enthroned. My hand has seized like a nest the riches of nations; as one takes eggs left alone, so I took in all the earth; no one fluttered a wing, or opened a mouth, or chirped!'"

God is furious at Assyria's claim and will to destroy other nations. Clearly, though, Assyria will suffer consequences for its fury toward other nations, including God's chosen people.  Did God use Assyria to chastise His people, to bring them back to the fold, to bring them to repentance? We can say "yes" in the sense that God uses the evil which any nation or any person encounters as a means to chastise us and bring us to repentance, to turn us from idolatrous ways. However, to those bringing harm and tragedy to another country or persons, in this case the empire of Assyria, God says the following, as noted in this passage from Isaiah: "Therefore the Lord, the Lord of hosts, will send among his fat ones leanness, and instead of  his glory there will be kindling like the kindling of fire."

In the responsorial psalm of today's liturgy, Psalm 94, we cry out on behalf of victims of violence:  "Your people, O Lord, they trample down, your inheritance they afflict. Widow and stranger they slay, the fatherless they murder. And they [those raging war and committing acts of violence] say, 'The Lord sees not; the God of Jacob perceives not.' Understand you senseless ones among the people; and, you fools, when will you be wise? Shall he who shaped the ear not hear or he who formed the eyes not see? Shall he who instructs nations not chastise, he who teaches men knowledge? For the Lord will not cast off his people, nor abandon his inheritance."

We are God's inheritance and, as such, we will be chastised when we do wrong but never abandoned. The psalmist reminds us  that God's "judgment shall...be with justice, and all the upright of heart shall follow it."

Sharing in the Chalice of Christ

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Polycarp, Bishop and martyr. In the collect of the Mass we pray that, like St. Polycarp, may we be given a place in the company of holy martyrs who share in the chalice of Christ.  As I think of St. Polycarp’s martyrdom,   I cannot help but think of what led to his death. It had to be a very difficult time, a time fraught with clashes, threats, and risky situations that pointed to the possibility of a tragic end, no less real that Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, his clashes with the authorities of his day, and his ultimate face-to-face encounters with his executioners.  

Martyrdom, for most of us, involves a bloodless dying to selfishness, pride, arrogance, resentments and sin of any kind.  It involves the quiet heroism of the housewife/husband of an alcoholic/drug-addicted spouse. It involves the “bleeding,” agonizing heartaches of the parents of missing children, mentally ill children, children with terminal or chronic, debilitating illnesses, and much more. It involves the sufferings  that tear at the heart strings of so many in the world of today where we encounter human traffickers, slave laborers, and corrupt persons preying on the young and old in so many ways.

Our bloodless martyrdom also includes resisting Satan’s deceptive schemes and being driven out into the desert to face our inner demons and saying “no” to sin. The desert for millions is the prison cells that they occupy as the result of a crime against humanity.  In our “deserts,” wherever those may be, may we be converted to the ways of the Lord and experience what the psalmist says to us in today’s responsorial psalm:  the “law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The decree of the Lord is trustworthy, giving wisdom to the simple” (Psalm 19).

Redemptive Suffering: God's and Ours

In today’s first reading, Hebrews 2: 5-12, St. Paul reminds us that “[i]t was not to angels that God subjected the world to come,” but to His only Begotten Son.  “In ‘subjecting’ all things to him, he left nothing not ‘subject’ to him.”  Wow!  You and I, every person in this world, every living thing, humans and beasts alike, are subject to the Lord.  We wonder as we listen to the news each night: men and women seeking to destroy one another, men and women and children being persecuted for their faith, men and women involved in every kind of abominable crime imaginable here on this earth.  “Subject” to him? It does not look like it.

In Jesus’ time, it did not look like the Messiah had come either—the Son of God as an infant, the Son of God fleeing for His life into Egypt, the  Son of God crucified on the cross? A Messiah? One to establish peace on earth?  He was killed. What kind of Messiah is that, we may wonder.  Many in today’s world see Jesus only as a prophet, not as the Son of God made man, the Son of God as Redeemer, Sanctifier, as the One who reconciles all things to Himself and to the Father. Yet that is who Jesus is! I believe! Do you?

Jesus, St. Paul tells us, tasted “death for everyone. For  it was fitting that he, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the leader to their salvation perfect through suffering.”   The demon who had taken possession of the man referred to in today’s Gospel reading, Mark 1: 21-28, recognized  Jesus’ origins, that He is the Son of God and says to Jesus: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”  The answer , of course, to that question is “Yes, Jesus did come to destroy Satan and all of his works through His sufferings on the cross.  Our sufferings, too, united with the sufferings of Jesus,  are redemptive and “bring us to glory.”  May I recognize that truth when suffering comes upon me and not curse it, rant and rave about it, recoil from its invitation to act on God’s behalf  but embrace it in faith and trust in God’s power working within me for my good and the good of the Church.

Jesus: our Mediator before the Throne of God

Yesterday, we reflected briefly on Paul’s reminder in Heb. 10: 32-39, that we endure “a great contest of suffering” as we journey through life.  The sufferings we endure could be because of our own mistakes or the mistakes of others, our own selfishness or the selfishness of others, our own sins or the sins of others.  Suffering enters our lives also because of perceived pain or misinterpretations of the behaviors of others.  Or, we could become victims of natural disasters or accidents we cause or are caused by others. There are repeated “Newtowns” and Aurora theater massacres, Columbines and Synagogue attacks, and other violent incidents that inflict severe pain upon people throughout the world. There are wars being raged in faraway countries in which we are involved or in our own country, our own cities and towns, our own homes. 

 

In today’s second reading, Heb. 2: 14-18, Paul reminds us that Jesus, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, “had to become like his brothers and sisters in every way, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest before God to expiate the sins of the people.  Because he himself was tested through what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.”   Jesus knows. Jesus cares. Jesus intercedes for us as we journey through this vale of tears to the Promised Land of eternal life where there will be no more suffering, no more pain, no more violence, no more sin.  And when I am the victim or perpetrator of any of these, I can count on Jesus’ intercession for me before the throne of God. I can know Jesus’ power to make right the wrongs I have inflicted or that have been inflicted upon me. As the psalmist tells me in today’s responsorial psalm,  Psalm 24, “the Lord is mighty in battle.” And He fights for me and for you so that we will know redemption, our own and that of others.