Homily for Tuesday, Week 12 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Tuesday
12th Week of Ordinary Time

June 25, 2024
2 Kings 19: 9-11, 14-21, 31-36
Matt 7: 12-14
Ps 48: 2-4, 10-11
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph Residence, N.R.

Sennacherib

Our 1st reading was a severely condensed version of God’s delivery of Jerusalem from an Assyrian siege.  The Assyrian Empire had overrun the Middle East, coming “down like the wolf on the fold,” in Lord Byron’s words,[1] ruthlessly killing, plundering, and transporting populations.  They’d already destroyed the northern kingdom, Israel, as we’d have heard yesterday but for the solemnity of John the Baptist, and deported its inhabitants, the so-called lost 10 tribes of Israel.  Only Judah and Benjamin remained of God’s chosen people—and those Levites who lived in that territory.

The sacred historian tells us that Israel perished because its rulers, like the infamous Ahab and Jezebel, and its people too, had been unfaithful to the covenant and ignored the prophets like Elijah, Elisha, and Amos.

The kingdom of Judah reacted differently to the prophets in spite of some faithless kings like Ahaz, Hezekiah’s father.  Hezekiah, tho, was faithful.  He tried to root out idolatry and obey the laws of the covenant.  So when he turned to God in humble prayer, as we heard this morning, the Lord listened, sent a plague among the besieging army, and saved Jerusalem: 

There lay the rider distorted and pale,

With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:

And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,

The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown. . . .

And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,

Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord![2]

King Hezekiah

Hezekiah’s faithful life and his fervent prayer induce us to live faithful to the covenant—to the new covenant given us by Christ:  to “do to others whatever you would have them do to you” (Matt 7:12) and to “enter thru the narrow gate … that leads to life” (7:13-14), the gate of Jesus (cf. John 10:7).

We also are to pray for humanity, which seems so far from God at times thru the violence of war, the economies of greed, ruthless nationalism, and pagan lifestyles.  We pray that “God uphold his city” (psalm response), that city which St. Augustine identifies with the kingdom of God.  Our prayer is that each of us will be faithful, that our brothers and sisters will be faithful, that persecutors and the violent will be softened and the godless converted—not “a plague on both your houses,” to quote Shakespeare,[3] but that God’s name, his mercy, and his praise may reach the ends of the earth (Ps 48:11).

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[1] “The Destruction of Sennancherib.”

[2] Byron again.

[3] Romeo and Juliet, Act III, scene 1.