BREAKING UP OUR IDOLS


FRIDAY, FOURTENTH WEEK IN ORDERINARY TIME

Hosea 14:2-10; Ps 51:3-4,8-9,12-14,17; Mt 10:16-23

You shall be Like God

The setting up of idols for worship within and without is a contamination of the pure initial desire within a human person for the absolute Truth and Goodness we call God. This original desire is divine because it is constituted by the will of the Triune God to make man in the image and likeness of God. Since God works on us without us, making us into His image, He works in us through us to make us like Himself. The evil one, noting that the work of making the human person like God requires our attention on God through his word, came to distract the man and the woman from focusing on the word and the activities of God in creation. Thus, our distraction from the word is the origin of idols. Once the self was put before the will of God, the enemy continually set up an idol for the human person, distracted from God. The evil one deceives us through presenting the self to us as something attractive to idolise, but each of us is empty and hollow without God. Hence, the self he presents to us is a cast within which he hides his hideous and terrible evil, darkness, and death. We are deceived when we focus on self and not on God.

To unmask the deceit of the devil, we must look within us to witness our emptiness, sinfulness, and darkness without the light of God. Since God is not far from each of us, we must not despair but confess the corruption we see within us to God whose word is Spirit and life. This is what David did, saying: “Have mercy on me, God, in your kindness. In your compassion, blot out my offence. O wash me more and more from my guilt and cleanse me from my sin.” This is what Hosea urges Israel and us all to do. “Israel, come back to the Lord your God; your iniquity was the cause of your downfall. Provide yourself with words and come back to the Lord. Say to him, ‘Take all iniquity away so that we may have happiness again and offer you our words of praise.’” God promises his forgiveness through the same Hosea. “I will heal their disloyalty, I will love them with all my heart, for my anger has turned from them. I will fall like dew on Israel.” God does this consistently for man. His love for us is unimaginable and incomprehensible. The visible creation is so arranged and ordered for the good of man and woman he made, only we have no eye to see it.

The Son of God, in his life as man, calls us back to these visible signs of God’s presence and love for us. A pity that the discord of sins in the world prevents us from hearing and following the concordance and harmony of God’s loving presence in the creation. The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is supposed to accentuate the sounds of God’s presence and love around us. The Lord, sending out his disciples, instructs them on how to mediate this loving presence of heaven on earth. “Remember, I am sending you out like sheep among wolves; so be cunning as serpents and yet as harmless as doves.” This wisdom of the serpents would enable us to remain channels of the Holy Spirit and therefore invincible to the evil forces in the world. The wisdom of the serpent consists in focusing on our Head, Jesus Christ, wherein lies our spiritual life. Living by the wisdom of the serpents helps us to overcome the strategy of the ancient serpent, which is to distract us from the word of God. “You will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the pagans. But when they hand you over, do not worry about how to speak or what to say; what you are to say will be given to you when the time comes, because it is not you who will be speaking; the Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you.” What is required of us is to focus our attention on Jesus Christ. May the grace of God the Father be with us always.

Let us pray: O God, who in the abasement of your Son have raised up a fallen world, fill your faithful with holy joy, for on those you have rescued from slavery to sin you bestow eternal gladness. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.    

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