Monday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time
I Kings 21:1-16
“`Frailty, thy name is woman,’” Hamlet says of his mother Queen Gertrude in Shakespeare’s famous play. Not really. There is certainly nothing frail about Queen Jezebel in the first reading. As her husband King Ahab pouts over not being able to obtain a parcel of land, she devises a scheme to steal it away. Her treachery breaches human law with theft and murder. Then it doubly defies God by having false witnesses swear that they heard poor Naboth curse God. Not frailty but sheer audacity characterizes this dame.
Some may see Jezebel as an archetypal Eve committing the original sin and inducing her husband to likewise offend God. She may also remind us of another Shakespearean female, Lady Macbeth. But we must be careful not to attribute evil to women as if they are not frail but singularly malicious. That does not seem to be the Bible’s perspective as both Adam and Eve together share the forbidden fruit. Likewise, Macbeth is capable of outrage acting alone. Nor does it bear out in contemporary experience where, if anything, masculine crime is more heinous and pervasive. What sin always demonstrates, however, is the human need of redemption. Somehow both men and women must be freed from the burden of guilt attached to their crimes.
“...all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God. They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption in Christ Jesus...,” declares St. Paul in the Letter to the Romans. Christ has freed Jews and Greeks, men and women from the guilt which holds them in sin like a car stuck in mud. We celebrate this redemption now in this Eucharist. Right here he frees us from our wanton desires to possess and to dominate like Ahab and Jezebel.
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