The people of Israel are
suffering, yet they are not afraid to ask God why. They ask God: Have you cast Judah off? Is Zion loathsome to you? The people are willing to acknowledge the
sins of their fathers and their own sins that they’ve committed against
God. They ask God to remember the
covenant that he made with them, to forgive them in honor of his own name.
We live in a society where
so many people are not willing to acknowledge the wrongs that they have
done. It is so much easier to blame the
system, to blame someone else, to sue someone, to not take responsibility. The people were confronting God in the midst
of suffering from a great draught. I
wonder if some of the farmers in the Midwest who are losing all of their crops
this summer cry out to God in the same way.
Ignatius of Loyola, whose
feast day we celebrate today, confronted God in this same spirit of
honesty. He was a wounded soldier
recuperating in bed when he got the call from the Lord to serve him. After a conversion of heart and time spent in
the wilderness, Ignatius spent time in the seminary at the University of Paris,
where he got the idea to start a new order, the Jesuits, which is actually the
largest religious order of priests in the world today. Leaving behind the life of a solider was not
easy for him – it meant confronting his demons and the way of life he
followed. Yet, Ignatius stands as a
witness today of someone who was able to confront God with great honesty and
candor. May we have the courage to do
the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment