Tuesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
Have you had your breaking moment with God yet? The author of today’s first reading is in the middle of his. The troubles of his world are multiplying, and it’s hard for him to see God in the destruction. His civilization was stuck in cycles of violence: war, invasion, occupation, exile. Our challenges today are different, but our reaction may be similar. The prophet Jeremiah responds with remarkable honesty and candor in his prayer to God. Often, we are afraid to ‘get real’ with God. It’s possible to believe that faith requires us to never admit that God’s actions (or lack of action) in our world don’t make sense to us. But is “why God?” an unfaithful prayer? The prophet shows us that it is not. When our actions don’t add up to the life we expect, there’s nothing wrong with telling God about our disappointment. We know we’re not perfect, but we expected better than this virus-infested, racist, hateful world. In humility, we recall that sin, both our sin and the sin of those around us, personal and social; these sins are the cause of quite a bit of the evil we experience. Just as someone else’s lack of mask might make me sick, I might end up suffering the effect of someone else’s sin.
The key for us in these times is to remember what the prophet remembers: “Is it not you alone, O Lord our God, to whom we look?” Jesus is the light of the world that is telling us how to live righteously in every age. The Holy Spirit of God is animating holy, generous, and wise responses to the challenges we face. How do we defeat racism? Follow Jesus and become a new creation, confessing and shedding our sinful societal and personal past. How do we create a healthy, just, prosperous society? Follow Jesus and act with charity, patience, and humility rather than the shouting matches that never solve anything. May we take our real, true, daily experiences and thoughts and feelings to God in prayer. When we get real with God, God gets real with us.
-Chris Nieport