Monday in the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 4, 2022

Hosea 2, 16; 17-18; 21-22

Thus says the Lord: I will allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart. She shall respond there as in the days of her youth, when she came up from the land of Egypt. On that day, says the LORD, She shall call me “My husband,” and never again “My Baal.” I will espouse you to me forever: I will espouse you in right and in justice, in love and in mercy; I will espouse you in fidelity, and you shall know the Lord.

The Prophet Hosea lived and worked in the northern Kingdom of Israel in the 700’s B.C.  His prophecy shows marriage as a sign of God’s love for his people and adultery as a sign of the people’s turning from God to idolatry, particularly to the worship of the Canaanite fertility god Baal.  In the First Reading for today’s Mass, the Lord speaks to Israel who has turned harlot in her unfaithfulness and declares his love for her despite her sins.  We can understand this in spiritual terms as God’s declaration of love for the sinner: his love for the sinner exceeds the bounds of reason even further than his love for old Israel since he sends his Son into the “desert” of this world in order to seal it with his Blood.

In the same way we can see the little girl who has died  and the woman with her long-standing bleeding condition in the Gospel Reading for today’s Mass (Matthew 9, 18-26).  The little girl signifies the formerly faithful Christian who has lapsed into a state of sin and cannot get out.  The Lord, knowing this, goes to the sinner and raises him up in the new life of grace.  Just as the girl is to be fed after she is brought back to life, so the converted sinner must be nourished by the Sacraments and also encouraged by other members of the faithful to keep to the right path.

The woman with the bleeding condition is the sinner who has not fallen into a state of sin but who has struggled against the temptation to despair after a long time of resisting sin.  She comes to the Lord Jesus to touch him so as to gain courage for her perseverance.  The Lord indeed is “touched” by her faith and gives her what she needs to carry on as a faithful member of his Body.

The Lord seeks us and we seek him.  His touch — the grace he provides us — gives us strength, renews us, and draws us closer to him so that we can call him “my Spouse”.

On this day we celebrate our nation’s beginnings and the good things we have through the opportunities our nation has given to us.  We pray to our 

God that he will help us to be good citizens, fulfilling the responsibilities that citizenship brings, and we pray for the peace and security that allows us to live as holy followers of Jesus Christ.