We hear quite a contrast in our two readings today. We have been hearing from the books of 1st and 2nd Kings in our first readings for several weeks now. In the reading from 2nd Kings today, we hear about the Babylonian conquest and destruction of Jerusalem. King Zedekiah is captured. Before he is made blind, the last thing that King Zedekiah sees is his sons being murdered. He is then led to his imprisonment in Babylon. The consequences for the Kingdom of Judah will be brutal: Jerusalem and all of its holy places will be destroyed, including the Temple. This initiates the period of Babylonian captivity for those residents who survived. Very few would remain behind. I can imagine that the people of Israel asked: Where is God in all of this? How can he allow this to happen? Doesn’t he care? We struggle for explanations when things go wrong, when we are in crisis or when tragedy occurs, when our enemy prospers and we suffer. In our limited human understanding and sometimes limited view of the information, we cannot adequately evaluate these questions about God and his perspective. Our reading today states that during the fourth month of the siege of the city of Jerusalem, famine plagued the city. I would imagine that such a long siege would shake the faith the people had in God.
Our Gospel is a very different scenario from the Babylonian captivity. We hear of a humble leper who does Jesus homage. But rather than beg or plead, what we hear from the leper is a type of prayer: “Lord if you wish, you can make me clean.” Perhaps in times of difficulty, stress, and turmoil, the simple humble prayer of the leper provides a model for us.
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