We must live in hope

A Reflection for Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Find today’s readings here.

There is no such thing as a good or easy time to be a Christian.

What do I mean by that? Well, think about it. The central symbol of our religion is the cross: to symbolize the pain and death suffered by Jesus Christ to ensure the salvation of humanity. The resurrection, though implicit in the symbol, is not explicit. We remember the tragedy not only to remind us of the sacrifice of Christ, but to embolden us in the face of our difficult mission. It is not easy to be a Chrisitan. To be a child of God means to make the active choice to do the right thing every moment of every day.

One might think that our modern era makes it particularly difficult to be a Christian. After all, we see dwindling attendance at Mass and a march toward cultural secularization, and think: “That’s it, our religion is on the outs, we may as well pack it in now.” Our markers for cultural connection with our neighbors are no longer found in our local parish; in fact, those markers may not exist at all, with people preferring to stay online rather than to go outside. With the additional ugliness of our current sociopolitical discourse, it seems like our modern era is a pronounced time of cultural and moral decay.

But, of course, it’s not the first time that this has been the case.

Take the Book of Hosea, for instance. Written in the eighth century B.C., things were not looking good for the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Israelites were abandoning the worship of God to instead worship “baals,” the local Canaanite deities, that represented very different morals and ethics than those of the chosen people. This chapter details Hosea, a minor prophet, and his wife Gomer, a promiscuous woman. Her unfaithfulness is a metaphor for the nation of Israel’s lack of fidelity to their covenantal relationship with God, symbolic of the societal issues of the time. The “she” in the passage above refers to Israel and the hope that she will renew the covenant with the Lord in good faith.

It can be dangerous to think that the golden days of our faith are behind us. That is a mindset that many have had over the millennia, since before the time of Jesus Christ and after. It is our responsibility not to fall prey to the temptation of thinking we are in a particularly difficult time. There has never been an easy time to be a Christian, but we are a people that live in hope. However far it seems we get away from God, we must remember that he wants us to come back to him—and the best, as they say, is always yet to come.

• Facebook
• X
• Mail