Tuesday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time
(Numbers 12:1-13;
Matthew 14:22-36)
Those who
know the Lord as a loving father will have difficulty appreciating today’s
first reading. In it God acts like a vindictive
ogre. He resents Aaron and Miriam’s
questioning His authority. Then he
afflicts a hideous skin condition on the woman.
Can this vision of God be attributed to a primitive people’s retelling
their traditions?
But the
redaction of the Pentateuch was not an ancient happening. Israel had become both a successful and a ruined
nation by the time it was completed. It
may be that the portrayal of God as petulant shows how Aaron and Miriam (erroneously)
perceive Him upon recognizing their own sin of envy. It may be that the authors of the Old Testament
want to indicate how one’s conception of God deteriorates because of sin.
Perhaps many
of us as well have difficulty thinking of God as forgiving because of our own
sins. We too think of ourselves as better than we have to be. We hold on to grudges. This logic transposes reality. We should be ready to forgive others because
God has forgiven us. Our most hideous
sins – betraying friendship, forsaking commitment, abusing the defenseless –
are forgiven with our confession and repentance.
