Thursday of the First
Week in Ordinary Time
(I Samuel 4:1-11; Mark 1:40-45)
After every human tragedy – earthquake, hurricane, tsunami –
humans ask themselves why it happened. They
wonder whether God is capricious, whether they did not respond properly to His
initiatives, or whether He exists at all.
Such questions echo the elders of Israel in today’s first reading.
“’Why has the Lord
permitted us to be defeated today by the Philistines?’” the men ask themselves.
Apparently assuming that the problem lies with God’s lack of attention, they
summon the Ark of the Covenant to be brought to the battlefront. “Surely the Lord will wake up,” the elders
seem to say, “when He sees His people’s need.”
Of course, the tactic fails. God
knows quite well what their situation, yet chooses not to support the Israelites.
God has His reasons which will always, to some degree at
least, remain obscure to humankind. We
might speculate in the case under consideration that God is changing the center
of human authority from judges to a king as well as the center of cultic worship
from Shiloh to Jerusalem. Or it may be that God is chastening his people for
thinking that the mere presence of holy things, not their becoming wholly
dedicated to God, is what is most important.
Still, God’s ways are often inscrutable.
If we could figure them out, we would sit on an equal level with
God. But this does not mean that God
caresses and despises humans at whim.
No, He has definitively shown favor toward all of us in Jesus
Christ. Like the leper Jesus cures in
today’s gospel, God loves us despite our not always heeding His commands.
