Thursday, January 15, 2026

 Thursday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

 (I Samuel 4:1-11; Mark 1:40-45)

 After every natural catastrophe – earthquake, hurricane, fire – humans ask themselves how God could have permitted it.  They wonder whether God has been capricious all along, 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 now seem to say, “when He sees His people’s need.”  Of course, the tactic fails.  God knows quite well of their vulnerability yet chooses not to support the Israelites. 

 God has His reasons which will always remain obscure to humans.  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 holy, 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 chosen to support His people when He sent us his Son, Jesus Christ.  Like the leper Jesus cures in today’s gospel, God loves us despite our not always heeding His commands.