Oy Vay--What Shall We Do? Series

Tuesday of the 15th Week in Course 2020

Plague Year homilies

When you consider it, God, whom we call by a kind of nickname “Yah” every time we sing the Gospel acclamation, God was heavily invested in His people. Specifically, He made a promise to King David, the greatest of the kings of Israel, that a descendant of his would rule over that people in perpetuity. But with few exceptions, the kings after David were to say the least extreme disappointments to God and to any of the faithful Israelites who followed the ten commandments. Over and over again the kings of Israel and Judah would worship the pagan gods of the land, and over and over again there would be famines or droughts or plagues or invading armies in a kind of circular betrayal and punishment that might have caused any observer to be cynical. You see, the Lord loves His people, even when they turn their backs on Him. He loves us, even when we insult and leave Him. The passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus, which freed us from sin and death, is the ultimate proof.

And just because the Lord loves us doesn’t mean the human nature of Jesus didn’t get frustrated and even angry at times at the lack of faith of even the towns in Galilee, His home. Here we find the Lord saying–in Hebrew–“oi, vavoy.” If it were Yiddish, it would be “oi, vay.” A signal of total exasperation from which we get the English word, “woe.”

But in the period 732 years before the time of Christ, the Judahite king Ahaz, newly installed as sole ruler of the southern kingdom, was faced with an invasion by his northern neighbors, the “other” Israel allied with Syria. And this was a horrible threat because the aggressors were planning to kill Ahaz and all his offspring and put some nobody in as a puppet king. That would extinguish the line of Davidic kings and void the prophecy of Nathan given long before to David.

You know, I’ve found and you may have as well that God specializes in taking our crooked lines and turning them into a beautiful painting. Sometimes even when we refuse to follow His way, He turns our rebellion into a good outcome, but generally an outcome we don’t like. Isaiah told Ahaz to trust in God, but Ahaz, who had a bad habit of doing just the opposite of the right thing, didn’t trust, didn’t ask for a sign, and tried to solve his problem by calling on Assyria to help him. Assyria always solved its own problems with a bloodbath, so it trampled down the Syrians, utterly destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel, dispersing all the people across their empire in such a way as to create the diaspora, and made Ahaz and Judah pay tribute. But God still carried His loving plan forward. Because Ahaz and his young bride soon welcomed a son into the world, a son who would become one of the great kings of Judah, and ancestor of Jesus, Hezekiah. These events delayed the ultimate fall of the southern kingdom until the Babylonians were the big gorilla in the Middle East. When they conquered, they left some of the Jews in the land and took the others to Babylon. There the Jews were able to coalesce into a united people loyal to the true God, and after a few decades when Babylon fell to Persia, they were able to return as a united people to their home in Palestine. From this people came Mary and Joseph and Jesus.

Right now the whole world is in the grip of a horrible plague, one unequaled since the worldwide flu of 1917. Many of us are in virtual family confinement, and those of us permitted to leave our homes do so under almost fascist guidelines. There have been efforts even to categorize religious observance as non-essential. On top of that, the idiots on the Supreme Court who can’t tell an XX from an XY chromosome have attempted to redefine the fundamental nature of men and women. This in the middle of a worldwide epidemic. It seems to many that the only winners among the faithful this year are the Little Sisters of the Poor, who don’t have to pay for killing babies. Finally, we are facing an election that if it goes one way–what I fear is the wrong way–will make murdering babies a national priority, throw open all our borders and impose even stricter controls on the Church. What do we think?

Well, it’s time for us to imitate the early Christians, not Ahaz. Political solutions are like bandages. They can stop the blood flow but they can’t cure the fundamental disease, which is loss of faith in God, and disobedience to His commandments. That means our task–clergy and laity alike–is to witness to the sovereignty of God and the sacramental power exhibited through the Church. People are wandering in moral darkness, and need confession to take care of their biggest problem–sin. And they are hungering for the Word of God, for union with God, and the Church has the means to provide that as well. Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.