Thursday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

The Church gives us a series of readings from the Prophet Hosea. Sometimes the prophets are asked not only to preach oracles but act out messages from God—like Ezekiel cutting a hole in his own house and squeezing through it (cf. Ezek. 12:5-15). Hosea goes to the extreme, marrying a prostitute. This was to show that despite the covenant bond between God and Israel, the people only commit “adultery” by worshiping pagan gods. “The more I called them,” God says through the prophet, “the farther they went from me, sacrificing to the Baals.” Despite the infidelity, Hosea, like God, will not abandon his wife and their children.

There is probably not a devout parent who does not have one or more children fallen away from the faith. It is so painful and difficult not to feel like a failure to vocational duty: “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.” Parents will not stop loving and praying for these children, even despite the rejection. If it is rejected, we have to let that peace return to us.

The prophecy in Hosea says that God drew His wayward children “with human cords.” The Father sent His only Son in the person of Jesus Christ to win us back through the saving death and Resurrection. We could not overturn our own debt of sin. So we pray, remain faithful when those we love only reject, and trust that actual grace available is strong to move those whom, up to this time, “did not know that God was their healer.”

Reflection by Fr. Pachomius Meade, OSB