You were unmindful of the Rock that begot you,
You forgot the God who gave you birth.
When the Lord saw this, he was filled with loathing
and anger toward his sons and daughters.
“I will hide my face from them,” he said,
“and see what will then become of them.
What a fickle race they are,
sons with no loyalty in them!” (Dt 32:18-20)
A large part of our human nature is that we want to be liked by all people. It is especially true of the people who we consider most important: parents, grandparents, siblings, relatives and friends. When we sense that we have “fallen out of favor” with someone who is important to us, we can become very anxious.
There is one whom I have left out of the list above: God.
We want — most especially — to know that God is pleased with us. He is incredibly important to us since He holds the key to everlasting life. When we sin, we know that we displease Him and hurt Him. That often makes many a sinner quite anxious.
Imagine God coming to the depth of feeling that is expressed in the reading above from the Book of Deuteronomy. “I will hide my face from them and see what will then become of them. What a fickle race they are, sons with no loyalty in them!”
Those words cut to the core.
And yet, we need to realize that those words, very appropriate to a people long ago who had sinned against the Lord, are just as appropriate to us today.
How fickle we have become! How disloyal!
We say that we believe in God and often live as if God does not exist. We say that life is a precious gift from God and live in a culture of death. We say that God is our Father and we are all brothers and sisters and yet we exclude people, many people, from our lives.
Let not those dire words apply to us today. Let us mend our ways and live as children of the Lord.
FAITH ACTION: Make a good examination of conscience and ask the Lord for forgiveness for any disloyalty shown to Him.