A Reflection for Monday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
For God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah.
I cannot read today’s passage without thinking about the Holy Land, and the terrible things unfolding there. As a young woman, I spent a semester studying in Jerusalem, and then devoted a summer to volunteer work in Gaza. Over the past few weeks my mind has been continually returning to that place, seemingly in every idle moment, as I try to make sense of questions that I know are far beyond my ken. With painful clarity, I remember the faces and voices of people who were kind to me, or shared a joke or a cup of tea, or just walked up to me on the street and launched into a political diatribe. That happened fairly often during my summer in Gaza.
I find myself compulsively paging back through the various chapters of the region’s fraught history. The past seems so very present during these fateful times. As my newsfeed fills with pictures of Gazan neighborhoods reduced to rubble, it feels as though the inhabitants are paying the price for a host of different people’s sins and errors, most of them committed before they were born. In the Old Testament, God often extends punishment “to the third and fourth generations.” Though this seems extremely unfair to us, it just seems to be a plain truth that people (often innocent children) can pay a terrible price for the mistakes of those who came before them, whose decisions they could not possibly have affected. This is certainly happening in Palestine today.
Why should God permit so much hatred and bloodshed in the land that he once graced with the incomparable honor of his birth? I want to understand, but I cannot. St. Paul tells us in today’s passage that, “God delivered all to disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.” The sinfulness is all too evident, but where is the mercy? And why is it necessary to leave so many “afflicted and in pain”?
God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah. At a moment like this, it is extremely difficult to see how this can happen.
Today’s reading offers at least a ray of comfort in reminding us, in moments of desolation, that God’s providence encompasses all earthly events, even when we cannot make sense of it. “For who has known the mind of the Lord / or who has been his counselor?” God’s ways are often inscrutable to us, and even though this is frustrating, we should never stop trusting him to incorporate all things into a broader providential plan.
Jesus offers a bit more. As hard as it is for us to see, God wants to show us mercy. Sometimes desolation is only a precursor to being welcomed to the banquet table of the Lord, like the poor, crippled, and lame in the Gospel. I fervently pray that that is the case for those who have suffered and died in the horrific violence that now traumatizes the people of the Holy Land.
God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah. At a moment like this, it is extremely difficult to see how this can happen. The horizon seems dark. Whole cities are in ruin, and it seems like worse things are to come. But God’s promises are never in vain, and even in the darkest hours, today’s reading offers one more bit of hope. “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, says the Lord.”
I want that truth. It’s worth carrying on a little longer, looking forward to the day when with God’s help and mercy, I will finally understand.
