Thursday of the Nineteenth Week in
Ordinary Time
(Ezekiel 12:1-12, Matthew 18:21-19:1)
Exile is a terrible experience. We only have to review the situations of Syrian
refugees in Lebanon and Jordan to appreciate exile’s horrors. The foreign cultures they inhabit lack
familiar institutions that might provide some solace. They have trouble finding jobs which leads to
their exploitation as slave labor. They are also exceptionally vulnerable to
new diseases and to swindlers’ deceptions.
In the reading from Ezekiel today God wants the prophet to
show the Jerusalemites that they are headed on a course of exile. Ezekiel is to act as a person uprooted from
his native place to awaken the people that their sins are bringing them to
ruin. The hope is that the people will
reform their lives so that God might spare them the trauma of exile. Sadly, however, they will refuse to repent.
We see Jesus as bringing us out of the exile that sin has
caused. Adam and Eve’s expulsion from
the garden was the prototype of exile from which Jesus has rescued us. He brought us to the “Kingdom of heaven,” not
yet heaven but on the way there. This
state is not so much a physical place as it is a renewed relationship with God
in which we experience the peace of Christ.
Acquiring the relationship, we will forgive others their offenses
against us, as the gospel today recommends, because we have come to realize how
gracious God is to us.
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