Wednesday in the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 6, 2022

Hosea 10, 1-3; 7-8; 12

Israel is a luxuriant vine whose fruit matches its growth. The more abundant his fruit, the more altars he built; The more productive his land, the more sacred pillars he set up. Their heart is false, now they pay for their guilt; God shall break down their altars and destroy their sacred pillars. If they would say, “We have no king”— since they do not fear the Lord, what can the king do for them? The king of Samaria shall disappear, like foam upon the waters. The high places of Aven shall be destroyed, the sin of Israel; thorns and thistles shall overgrow their altars. Then they shall cry out to the mountains, “Cover us!” and to the hills, “Fall upon us!”  Sow for yourselves justice, reap the fruit of piety; break up for yourselves a new field, for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain down justice upon you.

When we read the prophesy of Hosea we should keep in mind that when he speaks of “Israel”, he means the northern kingdom consisting of the ten tribes that seceded from the united kingdom established under Saul, David, and Solomon.  Hosea regarded David’s line as the legitimate rulers of the Chosen People.  Following the rebellion of the ten tribes came their rejection of worship in the Temple in Jerusalem and the rejection of Israel’s God.

“Israel is a luxuriant vine whose fruit matches its growth.”  Hosea comments about the fertility of the land in the north.  This was the land flowing with milk and honey to which the Lord led the people.  Judah and Benjamin, settled in the south, where the land was not as good for crops.  “The more abundant his fruit, the more altars he built; The more productive his land, the more sacred pillars he set up.”  With this great blessing, the people felt thankful, but offered sacrifices on altars they set up not dedicated to the God who had provided for them but to false idols.  They made gods pleasing to them, in opposition to the God whom they should have pleased.  When God gave the people greater harvests as though to persuade them to return to him, they responded with greater worship of their created gods.  It is a perverse truth about human nature that the more good that comes to us, the more credit we take for it.  Giving thanks to gods whom we ourselves create does not obscure this.  “Their heart is false, now they pay for their guilt.”  Taking credit for God’s blessings harms us not least in that it promotes a false confidence in our abilities.  At some point we will be faced with situations in which we recognize our utter helplessness — “God shall break down their altars and destroy their sacred pillars” — and because we do not know God we cannot appeal to him: “If they would say, ‘We have no king’ — since they do not fear the Lord, what can the king do for them?”  The Hebrew here presents challenges for translators.  A clearer translation, perhaps, from the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition: “For now they will say: ‘We have no king, for we fear not the Lord — and a king, what could he do for us?’ ”  That is, We do not worship God so he is not our king and he will not help us.  If he will not, then what good is the king we have appointed for ourselves?

“The king of Samaria shall disappear, like foam upon the waters. The high places of Aven shall be destroyed, the sin of Israel; thorns and thistles shall overgrow their altars.”  This has come to pass.  Very little is left to archaeology of the northern kingdom.  After Assyria conquered it, nearly all its inhabitants were moved out of the country into more eastern places.  They never came back.  Today we call these people “the ten lost tribes”.  The land of the former kingdom lay untilled for hundreds of years.  After some time, some people from the north moved into the area, but for the most part it sat empty until organized attempts to resettle it after the Judeans in the south returned from their later exile in Babylon.  Joseph’s and Mary’s ancestors would have settled in or around Nazareth at that time. 

“Then they shall cry out to the mountains, ‘Cover us!’ and to the hills, ‘Fall upon us!’ ”  This brings to mind Luke 23, 30, where the Lord Jesus, on his way to Golgotha, turns to the women weeping for him and speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem in the years to come.  And again, in the Book of Revelation, at the end of the world: “And the stars from heaven fell upon the earth, as the fig tree casts its green figs when it is shaken by a great wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll rolled up. And every mountain, and the islands, were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth and the princes and tribunes and the rich and the strong and every bondman and every freeman hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of mountains: And they say to the mountains and the rocks: Fall upon us and hide us from the face of him who sits upon the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!” (Revelation 6, 13-26).  Jerusalem fell to the Romans and was destroyed because the leaders of the people had encouraged a false idea of the Messiah who would rise up and save Israel.  In their absolute conviction of this false interpretation of the Scriptures, they rejected the true Messiah when he came.  They would have had peace if they had accepted him, but they preferred their false Messiah who performed mo miracles to an imaginary figure who never came. 

“Sow for yourselves justice, reap the fruit of piety; break up for yourselves a new field, for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain down justice upon you.”  The First Reading for today’s Mass ends with this exhortation.  To “sow” justice is to teach the truth about God.  Belief in God and service to him results in reaping “the fruit of piety”, which is salvation.  Breaking up “a new field” means to abandon the old ways of selfishness and turning to new life in Christ.  The old fields have been worked out and shown to be a dead end.  Only a complete break with sin can prepare a person for real life and happiness.  God rains down justice on this new life, providing the grace necessary for us to carry out his holy will and attain heaven.    

In today’s Gospel Reading (Matthew 10, 1-7), the Lord Jesus sends forth his Apostles to preach repentance.  He “rains down” grace on the world using the Apostles.  May he rain down grace on the world through us!