We have no king

Often, the readings from the Old Testament seem directed at us. Like last week’s daily Mass readings from The Book of Amos that overflow with Israel’s –read our own–infidelities against God. And this week’s from Hosea. Listen to the reading from the Christian liturgy for Wednesday:.

Israel is a luxuriant vine
whose fruit matches its growth.
The more abundant his fruit,
the more altars he built;
The more productive his land,
the more sacred pillars he set up.
Their heart is false,
now they pay for their guilt;
God shall break down their altars
and destroy their sacred pillars.
If they would say,
“We have no king”—
Since they do not fear the LORD,
what can the king do for them?….

That stanza, “Since they do not fear the Lord, what can the king do for them?!” recalls a long-ago Nevada neighbor. Claire [name changed] suffered deeply from her son’s suicide. The bizarre sudden death of her husband lollowed not long after her son shot himself. While renewing his pilot license on an instructional flight his plane collided with another on a perfectly sunny day in the small town of Yerington Nevada. Both pilots and Claire’s husband were killed.

Despite, my zealous Catholicism and her angry atheism, we became friends. Close enough for Claire to speak her rage and confusion at a God who would permit such evil on her family.

“Why wouldn’t your loving God save my husband?” The words were projectiles, filled with fury.

Claire’s husband’s atheism had been so aggressively radical that his clothing advertised it. And argued with believers about their faith. He was after all a scientist, she would proudly declare.

“We have no king”—
Since they do not fear the LORD,
what can the king do for them?..

Amazed at their lack of faith

After miraculously healing the woman’s twelve-year flow of blood and resurrecting the twelve-year-old daughter of religious official, Jarius, Jesus returns home. He isn’t there for a visit but rather to teach. Initially, his listeners are awed by the authority with which he preaches.

But…they know him.

These people watched Jesus grow up. And are likely aware of the strange circumstances of his birth. And so they choose to deny the Wisdom their own ears convey to them. And open themselves to jealousy and envy. They “took offense!”

They said, “Where did this man get all this?
What kind of wisdom has been given him?
What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands!
Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary,
and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?
And are not his sisters here with us?”
And they took offense at him.
Jesus said to them,
“A prophet is not without honor except in his native place
and among his own kin and in his own house.”
So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there,
apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them.
He was amazed at their lack of faith.

My friend Claire in the story above was angry at the God she claimed not to believe in for not protecting her husband. The very same husband who spent his time and energy denying God and ridiculing people of faith. So many of us are like that, aren’t we? We claim to be logical thinkers while behaving wholly irrationally.

Sometimes though, the apparent irrational might be

prudent. This past Thursday, we commemorated the Memorial of Saint Benedict. Benedict, the man who rejected the lawless, pagan and immoral practices of sixth century Rome by escaping to a cave. Most likely, his friends, and perhaps his family too, believed him crazed. But his biographer, Saint Gregory the Great, explains the young Benedict knew the critical import of silence and solitude.

Benedict’s “world was overturned by a tremendous crisis of values and institutions caused by the collapse of the Roman Empire, the invasion of new peoples and the decay of morals.” And yet this man would be a “luminous star” pointing the way out of the “dark night of history.” 

The period in Subiaco, a time of solitude with God, was a time of maturation for Benedict. It was here that he bore and overcame the three fundamental temptations of every human being: the temptation of self-affirmation and the desire to put oneself at the centre, the temptation of sensuality and, lastly, the temptation of anger and revenge. In fact, Benedict was convinced that only after overcoming these temptations would he be able to say a useful word to others about their own situations of neediness. Thus, having tranquilized his soul, he could be in full control of the drive of his ego and thus create peace around him. Only then did he decide to found his first monasteries in the Valley of the Anio, near Subiaco.

On Saint Benedict.

In a real sense, it was Benedict who founded the civilization that came to be known as Europe. It was thus that Pope Paul Vl declared Saint Benedict the Patron of Europe.

The “simple” Rule of Benedict

is a seventy-three chapter manual. It’s read daily by countless monks and oblates throughout the world. For me and I would guess, all, it functions precisely as a school.

the temptation of self-affirmation and the desire to put oneself at the centre, the temptation of sensuality and, lastly, the temptation of anger and revenge. In fact, Benedict was convinced that only after overcoming these temptations would he be able to say a useful word to others about their own situations of neediness. Thus, having tranquilized his soul, he could be in full control of the drive of his ego and thus create peace around him.

On Saint Benedict