Witnessing To The Culture Of Death Series

Tuesday of the 2nd Week in Lent 2020

For our first reading today, I have chosen to begin earlier in the first chapter of Isaiah than the Lectionary suggests, and to add the verses the Lectionary omits. The Lenten readings take a great deal of the very long prophecies of Isaiah, but they omit quite a bit, too. The context is one of the several periods in which the people of Israel were attacked from north, east or south, and death, disease and exile had depopulated the land. It’s a kind of dialogue between Israel and God that is reported here. Israel says that unless God had left a “scanty remnant” from the invasion, they would have been wiped out, like Sodom and Gomorrah in the time of Abraham and Lot.

The Lord then takes up the challenge, and calls the leaders of Israel princes of Sodom, and the general population He calls “people of Gomorrah.” The mention of worthless sacrifices suggests that Sodom and Gomorrah were a religious people, who offered sacrifices to some god or another. But they were destroyed. Why? For the same reason that the chosen people, God’s own nation that was supposed to attract and inspire all humans with right conduct and proper worship of the True God, God’s chosen people were acting like the perverse and unjust people of the Sodom-Gomorrah region back in the day. Sure, they were keeping the new moon festival and the daily sacrifices, but then they were going out and plotting murder and rape and deceit and perjury. Before God would pay any attention to their prayers and sacrifices, they needed to wash off their bloody hands and learn to do good, not evil. Only then would their prayers be heard and their land be safe from attack and plague.

Jesus, as He always did, took up the mantle of Isaiah in His own day, and pushed the leaders of Israel even further. The Pharisee culture was supposed to help the people to become holy, but instead it was just setting up a two-tier society in which the Pharisees did holy things without becoming more just, compassionate and outward-looking. The common people ended up being preyed upon by Jew and Gentile alike. In that situation, it’s not surprising that about thirty years later they rose up in revolt against the oppressive culture, and began a war that ended with the total destruction of Jerusalem and the temple there, and the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Jews.

Jesus, by contrast, preached love of enemies and servant leadership, repentance from sin and sharing with the poor and dispossessed. For that message the leaders of the Jews and Gentiles conspired to have Him executed as a common criminal. But He rose from the dead and by His Holy Spirit filled the Church He left us with His presence in sacrament and in service.

What is the challenge to us today, we who twenty centuries later, about ten years before the two thousandth anniversary of the Last Supper, seek to know and do the Lord’s will? We are in exactly the same position in our secular culture of death that Isaiah and Jesus were in their own. All around us people are confused. Our economic situation–for the time being–is pretty good. But the cultural and political situations are very troubling. Fifty years of work by the pro-life movement, largely a Catholic and Christian movement, has changed public opinion toward supporting the right of children to be born. The science of pre-natal development has advanced to the point that even the abortionists, the Planned Parenthood cabal, admits that what they are killing is a human being. But they double down now and say they have the right to kill the innocent child anyway, if the mother can be persuaded to agree. People who have adopted perverse sexual practices as a lifelong habit have had the chutzpah to demand that their sodomy be legalized, and even recognized as the basis for marriage. One of their own even dared to imagine himself President of our nation. And thousands supported that insanity.

Our response must be clear. We are Christians, we are Catholics. Each week we essentially proclaim that we believe and profess all that the Catholic Church has taught for nearly two thousand years. And so we must work and pray, as St. Benedict told us to do. Work for the spread of the kingdom in our families and communities, and vote as a Christian must, for godly men and women who will resist the culture of death and legislate for life, peace, and goodness. But pray always as Jesus did, with weeping for those who are in bondage to some kind of sin. With all our heart and resources we must act in the Spirit of Jesus to be His hands, His feet, His ears and His voice ministering to a world in desperate need of His presence.