Tuesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Yesterday, our first reading from the book of the prophet Hosea conveyed God’s love for his people. Despite their infidelity, God loved the people of Israel, and he desired that they would return his love wholeheartedly and unselfishly. When they did not, God became justly angry, and the words of Hosea in today’s passage now express the disappointment of God in his people. It is not simply that God is a selfish lover who thinks only of Himself. Rather, God sees that the people are destroying themselves by turning to other gods and worshiping hand-made idols.
At times in the Old Testament we see the Hebrew people realizing that other nations’ gods are not real gods. Our psalm for today, Psalm 115 contains this message. All these other nations have been led astray and are divided by God because they have set up their own gods rather than recognizing the true God. But at the same time, the people of Israel wanted to be like the other nations around them. Hence they set up kings and princes when they should have been a theocracy that trusted in the Lord and had no king but God, and no law but God’s law. It’s no wonder that Hosea foretold Israel’s captivity again. This punishment for their sins was not only just, but it was another opportunity for the people to repent and to turn again to God in love, to recognize the falseness of these other gods, and to see the mercy extended to them. This theme of mercy and pity is also found in our gospel passage today from Matthew. As in the book of Hosea, God, here incarnate in Jesus, is moved with pity for his people. He is saddened that they are like sheep without a shepherd. They are lost in the world, drawn to be like those around them and unable to recognize God in their midst. Again, we see that great love of God for his people and the desire that God’s love be returned. Jesus’ action in today’s reading is to send out laborers, or, in other words, to have his disciples spread the message of God’s love and the opportunity to repent and return to God, to be converted in mind, body, soul. It is the opportunity to recognize Jesus as God. Of course, most people didn’t get that message right away. They heard the gospel, but the meaning wasn’t clear until Jesus performed God’s love by suffering his passion and death and then rising to new life. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was the ultimate expression of God’s love. The love of God portrayed in Hosea became the love of God come down to earth in the person of Jesus. While the Hebrew people were constantly given the chance to repent, they could never save themselves. God knew this, and so in the end, God saved us in Jesus, though we were undeserving. Despite their and our lack of fidelity and unwillingness to return God’s love as we should, God is moved with pity for us. He can’t stop loving us. Today, let us consider that great love of God which causes Jesus to be moved with pity for us. Let us pray that we can respond to that love as we should, accepting the gift of salvation offered to us and turning to God, again and again, in a continual conversion that ends only when we reach eternal life with God. - Maria Morrow