Hosea 11: 1-4, 8e-9
Thus says the Lord:
When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
The more I called them,
the more they went from me;
they kept sacrificing to the Baals,
and offering incense to idols.
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them up in my arms;
but they did not know that I healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of love.
I was to them like those
who lift infants to their cheeks.
I bent down to them and fed them.
My heart recoils within me;
my compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my fierce anger;
I will not again destroy Ephraim;
for I am God and no mortal,
the Holy One in your midst,
and I will not come in wrath.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Responding in Compassion and Love
Oftentimes, readings from the prophets disturb or confuse me with angry and bitter invective. But this beautiful passage from the prophet Hosea richly describes God’s love for his people with the depth of emotional feeling that a parent remembers of his or her child.
Few parents escape the deep hurt and pain experienced when their children turn from complete adulation and always wanting to be together to the coldness of adolescence when they seem to disavow knowing their mother or father, mumble one-word answers, and criticize everything about their home and family. An immediate desired reaction to this pain and hurt could easily be a desire to punish their child, to force them back to obedience and respect.
Hosea allows for God’s initial reaction to his people’s treachery and turning away with language of hurt and pain; we understand this way from our own experience. Hosea then shares God’s tender response, which is deeply rooted in God’s love and compassion for his people (us too!).
God’s ways sure are not my way…and thanks be to God!
—Fr. Glen Chun, SJ, a priest of the Midwest Province, is community minister of Bellarmine House of Studies in St. Louis.
Prayer
I pray to you O Lord, my God, and ask for the grace to look more deeply and honestly at my way of reacting so quickly to feeling personally hurt with anger, embarrassment, and unfairness. I know it satisfies my ego and self-protection, yet it leaves me at odds in my heart because it also is destructive to our relationship, too. When I attempt to return hurt for hurt and disrespect for disrespect to another person, whom you love equally, I hurt and disrespect you even more. I ask for the grace to try it your way more and more, and thus to be more rooted in the same love and compassion.
—Fr. Glen Chun, SJ