14th Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 7, 2013
Is 66: 10-14
St. Ursula, Mt. Vernon, N.Y.
“Thus
says the Lord: Rejoice with Jerusalem
and be glad because of her, all you who love her. Lo, I will spread prosperity over Jerusalem
like a river” (Is 66: 10, 12f).
The
last part of the book of the prophet Isaiah is linked with the return of the
Jewish people from a long exile in Babylon, and the rebuilding of their holy
city after the Babylonians had destroyed it more than 70 years earlier. God has redeemed the exiles and brought them
home. He promises to restore Jerusalem
to something of its former splendor, which will be a source of great joy to all
who love her—probably meaning much more to the Jews of the 6th c. B.C. than
rebuilding at the site of the WTC means to us, even tho this parish has a
particular tie to the grief of 9/11.*
The
Jews’ exile and Jerusalem’s destruction had been the results of their
infidelity and their sins. Their
redemption, the blessings coming to them now, the joy promised to them, are now
a sign of God’s favor: “the Lord’s power
shall be known to his servants,” Isaiah says (66:14). If they are “his servants,” evidently they
have returned to him; now they are faithful to his ways.
We’ve
just celebrated—with great joy, with stirring music, with spectacular
fireworks—the 237th anniversary of our independence. Coincidentally, at Gettysburg, Pa., the
nation has also just observed the 150th anniversary of the terrible battle
fought there during what Lincoln called the “great civil war testing whether any
nation” could live up to the ideal we’d so boldly declared “four score and
seven years” before that battle, “the proposition that all men are created
equal.” In a later speech (his 2d
Inaugural), Lincoln linked “the scourge” of that civil war to the wrath of God
wreaked upon a nation that had horribly offended against the equality of all men by enslaving
one-eighth of its population; the nation had to expiate in blood—¾ of a million
dead—and spent treasure all its sins against African-Americans.
Sacred
Scripture links the prosperity of a city or a nation to its fidelity to the
Lord, and a city or nation’s woes to its sins, as did Lincoln, our most
biblically-grounded President.
Each
year, particularly on the Fourth of July, we recall the blessings that have
come to us from Almighty God. If we are
attentive, we may even note that the Declaration of Independence refers 4 times
to God, including that stirring phrase, “all men are created equal, … endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”; including an appeal to “the
Supreme Judge of the world” to regard the right intentions of our Founding
Fathers; and ending with “a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine
Providence” to effect what the Declaration had set down on paper.
It
is right, then, my brothers and sisters, that we observe the state of our
nation and its adherence to its fundamental principles and its faithfulness to
our Creator, our Supreme Judge. If we
see a nation, a society, a world that is peaceful and prosperous under the protection
of Divine Providence, let us give thanks and renew our commitment to his way,
so that “our hearts may rejoice and our bodies flourish like the grass,” as
Isaiah says (cf. Is 66:14). If we see a
nation, a society, a world that is in trouble and turmoil, let us ask why that
is so.
In
many respects, our society is in trouble.
You know it very well if you watch the evening news or read the
newspapers. We might consider stories
about violence in our lives: street
crime and domestic abuse; about addictions to drugs and alcohol; about athletes
cheating with steroids; about political corruption; about the huge percentage
of children born out of wedlock; about financial scandals; about corporate bigs
collecting humongous bonuses while workers’ wages are frozen. And of course when we look at foreign news,
its full of war, genocide, terrorism, the violation of women, people living in
refugee camps generation after generation, people taking to rickety boats to
cross dangerous seas or hiking in 110º desert heat in hope of finding a better
place to live and work, shoddily constructed buildings collapsing on top of
hundreds of poor people trying to make a wretched living.
What
all of these ills have in common—besides degrading the world we live in—is that
each is sinful in some form; each reflects a violation of the good order of the
world that God created; each offends in some fashion the natural dignity of the
people God created; each is rooted in a selfishness that places one
individual’s or one group’s advantage—that individual or group’s perception of
what is good, for himself or themselves—above the good of everyone else, above
what the Catholic moral tradition calls “the common good.”
A
couple of weeks ago, as most of you know, James Gandolfini died, much mourned as
an actor and a human being. His greatest
claim to fame, as most of you also know, was playing Tony Soprano—a fictional
embodiment of putting oneself and one’s clan ahead of everyone else, and using
any means necessary to advance his own interests. If you’re paying attention to the trial of
Whitey Bulger up in Boston, you’re witnessing the same story, except that one’s
not fiction.
Tony
Soprano and Whitey Bulger are just different forms of the kind of egoism that
shapes all those other ills I mentioned, all those other sins, all those other
offenses against God.
(Another
form of that self-centeredness was endorsed on June 26 by the Supreme Court
when it ruled, twice, in favor of “same-sex marriage”—rulings which effectively
hold that the relationship between any 2 adults trumps the natural order of
human sexuality, of procreation, and of the good of children, on which the good
of the whole of society finally depends.
By the Court’s legal logic, the same “marriage” right must be extended
to the entire country and to polygamous families.)
Rwandan genocide (Wikipedia Commons) |
A
society founded on self-centeredness, on individualism or the advantage of one
clan or one tribe, will disintegrate.
You saw that in the genocide of 700,000 people in Rwanda 20 years ago
and of tens of thousands of people in Bosnia, also 20 years ago; you see it today
in most of the killing going on in the Middle East, from Egypt thru Israel and
Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. You see it in the drug killings in Mexico. You see it in gang activity in the streets of
American cities. You see it in our
abortion clinics and in our divorce courts.
You see it in our suicide rates.
The
solution for us in the 21st century is the same as the solution for the Jews in
the 6th century B.C.: to return to the
Lord with all our hearts, to put our trust in “the Protection of Divine
Providence” and not in money or fame or power or even family ties, and to walk
in God’s ways. When we heed his voice
and keep his ways; when we look to the welfare of our brothers and sisters, “with
brotherhood from sea to shining sea”—then God will spread prosperity over us
like a river and we shall enjoy peace—peace of heart, peace among ourselves,
and peace between nations. We shall have
good cause to rejoice and be glad, and to be thankful to our gracious God.
*Parishioner Michael A. Boccardi, Scoutmaster of Troop 40, was killed at work in the WTC.
*Parishioner Michael A. Boccardi, Scoutmaster of Troop 40, was killed at work in the WTC.
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