Tag: idolatry

Idolatry

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, spirituality3 Comments

Memorial of Saint Pius X, Pope
Monday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
August 21, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/082123.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our two readings connect to remind us of an essential truth: stay faithful to God’s Word in order to live in peace, justice, and joy.

The passage from Judges recounts the topsy-turvy history of Israel around 800 years before Christ. It was a time when various Judges served as leaders before the eventual establishment of the kingdom under Samuel.

The Twelve Judges of Israel (in technicolor!)

These were tough times for Israel. One after another, hostile forces rose against them. During each threat, someone would emerge as a deliverer and, with their heroic success, endure for a while as the Judge.

The writer equates Israel’s ups and downs with God’s pleasure or displeasure with the people. When the people broke faith, God punished them with political turmoil. When the people were repentant, God provided a deliverer.

Of course, this is an overly simplified interpretation of events. By infusing God with the human qualities of anger and appeasement, the writer explains complex history as a simple quid pro quo: You’re bad, you get zapped. You’re good, you get rewarded.

We know that our God does not vacillate between angry punishment and satisfied recompense. God is always loving, forgiving, and nurturing. So what can this passage teach us about our own faith life and the spiritual culture of our times?

I found a key reflection point in the passage’s initial phrase: The children of Israel offended the LORD by serving the Baals.

The “Baals” are false gods erected by those who manipulate “faith” to advance their self-absorbed agendas. In the time of the Judges, these Baals might have been represented by carved idols, or natural phenomena such as the moon or stars. In the end, this idolatry – like all idolatries – rewarded some hidden promoter with money, power, or influence.

But what are the “Baals” of our culture? What is our modern idolatry?

Britannica Dictionary offers this definition of idolatry: “A person becomes guilty of a more subtle idolatry, however, when, although overt acts of adoration are avoided, he attaches to a creature the confidence, loyalty and devotion that properly belong only to the Creator.”

As we pray with this passage, we might look to our own society with its infectious materialism, nationalism, consumerism, racism, sexism. These and other imposed societal shackles serve to bind some in order to exalt others to idol status. As it is with any communicable disease, some of these systems – acknowledged or not – may be lurking within us.

Worship of these “isms” falsly legitimizes:

  • the usurpation of the poor in a credit-bound economic system
    (e.g. how many times have you been offered “revolving credit” which makes money on ever-increasing interest rates)
  • the armed control of the defenseless
    (e.g. the insurmountable influence of the gun lobby to produce weapons of mass destruction despite the repeated massacres of our children)
  • the supersession of the haves over the have-nots
    (e.g. college placement of moneyed descendants over academically superior disadvantaged applicants)
  • the veiled acquiescence to white-advantage
    (e.g. entrenched indifference to colorless board rooms, executive suites, and other decision-making forums)
  • the subtle second-classism toward and objectification of women
    (e.g. the range of systemic oppressions suffered by women, from Taliban terrors and sex trafficking to indefensible Church exclusions)

Our Gospel clearly states the antidote to such idolatry:

Jesus answered the young man:

There is only One who is good.
If you wish to enter into life,
keep the commandments:
(Love God above all things,
and your neighbor as yourself.)

Jesus tells him further that if he wishes to be perfect, he will:

  • dispossess himself of anything that distracts him from God
  • follow Jesus and the Gospel with all his heart

I never read that Gospel without realizing that, just like that young man, I have a lot of work to do on my own often idolatrous soul.

Poetry: Sell All You Have – Malcolm Guite

To whom, exactly, are you speaking Lord?
I take it you’re not saying this to me,
But just to this rich man, or to some saint
Like Francis, or to some community,
The Benedictines maybe, their restraint
Sustains so much. But I can’t bear this word!
I bought the deal, the whole consumer thing,
Signed up and filled my life with all this stuff,
And now you come, when I’ve got everything,
And tell me everything is not enough!
But that one thing I lack, I cannot get.
Sell everything I have? That’s far too hard
I can’t just sell it all… at least not yet,
To whom exactly, are you speaking Lord?

Music: Simple Living (A Rich Young Man) – Keith & Kristyn Getty, Stuart Townend

Psalm 115: Not To Us

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Mercy, ordinary time, Poetry, Psalms, spirituality, suffering, TruthLeave a comment

Tuesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

July 7, 2020

Click here for Gospel reflection – 2018
Click here for today’s readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 115. The first verse, not included in today’s passage, is perhaps the most familiar:

Not to us, LORD, not to us
but to your name give glory
because of your mercy and faithfulness.

This verse sets the tone for the whole psalm by establishing that it is only in humility that we will experience God’s faithful mercy.

The psalm sections offered today show how hard it is to keep humble attention on God in a world full of idols. While the psalmist mocked these idolatrous gods and their worshippers, his descriptions indicate the significant space they occupy in his own imagination.

There are lots of distracting “gods” in our world too. As a matter of fact, it is sometimes difficult to find the real God because our culture cloaks God in its own distorting devices. 

For example, we encounter ideologies which promote a “god” who:

  • loves America more than other nations
  • loves white people more than black and brown people
  • loves war as long as we are the victors
  • loves my prosperity over other people’s justice
  • tolerates, or even blesses, violence for the sake of superiority
  • isolates, stereotypes, and discriminates over who deserves blessings

Some of these idolatries work to convince us that we are more important to God if we are white, rich, male, heterosexual, healthy, armed, not too old, and American – because these deifications paint their “god” with those strokes.

The more we match up with this “god” – the molten image of a greedy, elitist, militaristic culture – the more we tend to take glory to ourselves. And the more others might legitimately question, “Where is their God?”.

This becomes all the more disorienting when influencers who benefit from such misguided idolatry and fundamentalism use them to promote themselves and their personal and political agendas.

Psalm 115 says, “Stop that!”.

Our Gospel shows us what God is really like — Jesus, who:

  • sought out those suffering
  • loved the poor and abandoned
  • was moved with pity for others’ pain
  • taught, proclaimed and healed in the name of God’s Mercy

Living in the light of this merciful God both humbles and exalts us so that we may wholeheartedly proclaim by our lives:

Not to us, LORD, not to us
but to your name give glory
because of your mercy and faithfulness.

Non nobis, Domine, non nobis ; 
sed nomini tuo da gloriam,
super misericordia tua et veritate tua.

Poetry: Non Nobis Domine! – Rudyard Kipling
(Written for “The Pageant of Parliament,” 1934)

NON nobis Domine!—
    Not unto us, O Lord!
The Praise or Glory be
    Of any deed or word;
For in Thy Judgment lies
    To crown or bring to nought
All knowledge or device
    That Man has reached or wrought.
And we confess our blame—
    How all too high we hold
That noise which men call Fame,
    That dross which men call Gold.
For these we undergo
    Our hot and godless days,
But in our hearts we know
    Not unto us the Praise.
O Power by Whom we live—
    Creator, Judge, and Friend,
Upholdingly forgive
    Nor fail us at the end:
But grant us well to see
    In all our piteous ways—
Non nobis Domine!—
    Not unto us the Praise

Music: Non Nobis Domine

https://youtu.be/bb9ro4IQqi8