Tuesday of the 19th Week in Course 2020
St. Clair
Why did the people of Israel, the Chosen People of the True God, in the language of the Bible, go “whoring” after false gods, when week after week they had heard the story of their God, the One who loved them and rescued them from Egyptian slavery? Yes, it’s true that the worship of Baal and Astarte, which featured things like ritual prostitution, was different and more appealing. But the real reason they adopted the gods of Canaan was economics. When they moved into the Promised Land, the land was not empty. And they didn’t exterminate the inhabitants, as is written in Torah. No, they were shepherds, nomads, moving into an agricultural paradise. Go into the Jordan valley near the river and you’ll see lush orchards, banana plantations, and other foodstuffs, even today. They had no idea how to grow food, so they listened to their neighbors. Worship of Baal and Astarte was to the inhabitants a critical part of their horticulture. You want a good harvest? Offer sacrifice to the gods of the land. It was a simple and clear exchange.
That’s the reason, when Ahab and Jezebel became such idol-worshipers that they began to kill the priests and prophets of YHWH, the prophet Elijah called down what became a three-year drought and famine on the land. It was God’s way of showing that the fertility gods the Israelites had defected to were powerless, that they couldn’t deliver what the people needed. Elijah then had the famous confrontation with the 450 prophets of Baal, in which God sent fire down to consume his legitimate sacrifice. Afterwards God sent rain upon the land, showing that if there is anything coming Israel’s way from heaven, it is by way of the same God who delivered them from Egyptian captivity.
In this light, recall the reading from the prophet Hosea, writing a little later than Elijah’s ministry. “And in that day, says the LORD, you will call me, `My husband,' and no longer will you call me, `My Baal.' For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by name no more.” In God’s mind, His people were His Bride, but they had gone and prostituted themselves to false gods, both figuratively and literally. So one way or another, the Father would extricate them from the grasp of the false husbands, and espouse Israel forever to Himself. And, yes, part of that historically was the destruction of both northern and southern kingdoms, and exile into foreign lands. But ultimately, the final answer involved sending Jesus Christ, Son of God, to live and teach and suffer and die and rise so that He could be the true husband of the renewed, baptized and confirmed Bride, His Church. This is the reality in which we now live in time. The Eucharist is the earthly form of the wedding banquet, which we will celebrate forever in heaven.
The Gospel continues the agricultural analogies by looking at the Church as the Vine of God. That’s from the OT as well. Each of us is a kind of branch on the Vine who is Christ. If we bear fruit, if we stand forth in our culture and proclaim the Truth, and every once and a while help to save some poor soul through our prayer and work, then we are fit for the kingdom of God. If not, if we are hypocrites and think more about “fitting in” and less about being fit, we go into the fire on the last day.
Now how does that apply to the current unpleasantness, or any other crisis in which there is a lot of economic distress? Jesus said, famously in both Matthew and Luke, “Blessed are the poor.” He is supposed to be talking about us. And He’s not telling us to make ourselves destitute. The 20th century popes had some good advice about striving to have what we need, but for most Americans, the pile of possessions in our houses and banks is WAY more than we need. So, in justice, what we need to do is pay our bills and keep a month or two of expenses in liquid assets and dedicate the rest to our churches and helping the destitute to become merely poor. If we had that in mind, and if we began to take joy and delight in having assets to share with the destitute, we’d be much happier in this life and be making down payments on the life to come.
It’s pretty easy to think about, but difficult to do. But shouldn’t we make a start, like right now, because there are millions in the land who are on the brink of destitution. Let’s help them keep their homes and feed their children, and help our churches to stay open even though some governments don’t want them to do so.
