Fifteenth week in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 1: 10-17; Matthew 10: 34-11:1
The book of Numbers 6: 24-26 relates the importance of
God turning His face towards His people. God turning His face towards His
people is a sign of blessing and conferring grace. If so, God hiding His face signifies the absence of God’s grace. Biblically, God hiding his face signifies a perceived
absence of His presence and intervention. God hiding His face is typically an act
of discipline and purification. God, Yahweh, is upset with the people of Judah, and so, He determines to hide His face from them. There are many instances
where God hides His face – God hides His face from David ( Psalm 30: 7, 13: 1-2).
Job asks God why do you hide your face from me
and treat me as your enemy? (Job 13:24). Why does God hide His face from people
He loves and cares? Because of:
The widening gap between life and
worship: Isaiah expresses God’s displeasure by calling the
Israelites people like Sodom and Gomorrah. Biblically, Sodom and Gomorrah are known
for extreme wickedness and idolatry. God is not delighted with the religious
pious activities of the wicked; God is not pleased with worship, a multitude of
sacrifices, and offerings of fatted animals. Prayers and incense have become abominations
to God. Elaborate feast celebrations have become a burden to Him. The worships do
not delight God because of the disparity between life and worship. There is a
huge contradiction between worship and way of life. The heart is full of evil
inclinations, and the hands are full of blood of violence and injustices. The
life does not replicate the worship. Therefore, God has turned away His face
from His people.
Tendency to take God for granted:
God is loving and compassionate. Israelites had a tendency to take God for
granted. They mistook God’s magnanimity. They thought God could be pleased with
fatted sacrifices, long prayers and elaborate feast celebrations. Our offerings, fat donations, and pious practices cannot placate God. God is not a
thing to be bought nor a human person to be pleased. God loves us; however, he does not shun discipline when required. God’s magnanimity does not exclude
disciplinary activities, and therefore, God has hidden His Face.
What the Lord Requires:
God is calling us to repent in obvious ways. Clean our lives. He admonishes us
to stop thinking that we can continue to journey in sinful ways and still remain
in God’s favor. God wants communion between worship and word. And the Lord requires
that we become not orators but doers of justice; how; do good, seek justice,
correct oppression, defend the fatherless and plead for the widow.
Our Takeaway
1. God hiding His face signifies the absence of His presence and intervention. It is typically an act of
discipline and purification.
2. Worship should be replicated in life. God cannot be
placated by our offerings, fat donations, pious practices and elaborate celebrations.
God is not a thing to be bought nor a
human person to be pleased.
3. Let us not mistake God’s magnanimity. God’s magnanimity
does not exclude disciplinary activities.
4. God loves not the orators of justice but doers of
justice.
Wilson SVD
Divine Word Missionary
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