Tuesday of Week 16 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Micah 7:14-15,18-20
Today’s final selection from Micah consists of a lovely prayer from a people aware of their great needs which only God can remedy. The prophet begs God to lead his people to richer pastures, for the people of Israel are his very inheritance:
Shepherd your people with your staff,
the flock that belongs to you…
Right now, they live:
…alone in a forest
in the midst of a garden land…
The prophet says they are living isolated in a land that is unproductive—in the sense that they are living in a situation of desolation and hardship after their return to Jerusalem from their exile in Babylon.
They now long for the days when they could pasture in:
…Bashan and Gilead….As in the days
when you came out of the land of Egypt,
show us marvelous things.
This was a time when they were the witnesses to all God’s wonders on their behalf. And as in the days after they left Egypt, they long for more wonderful signs of Yahweh’s love and power.
The prophet then appeals to God’s very nature to come to their aid:
Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
and passing over the transgression
of the remnant of his possession?
This prayer is a kind of psalm of which similar examples occur in the prophetic writings. Micah’s God is not the kind of god that others believe in, a god who instils terror and fear. This God takes faults away and pardons crime. This God is not vindictive; he does not cherish anger forever, but delights in showing mercy and compassion.
Micah begs his God to have pity on his people in spite of all that they have done:
…tread our iniquities under foot.
You will cast all our sins
into the depths of the sea.
He appeals to God to remember and to implement the covenants of old that were made with Abraham and Jacob, covenants of faithfulness and mercy.
Perhaps we, too, feel now (or have felt at other times) that our lives were being lived in a kind of desert. We ask God to lead us to richer pastures where we can experience joy and peace. As well, we should also know that we have a God beyond compare, made known to us through the life and death of Jesus. Through Jesus, he has given us a new life in a new covenant. As did the people of Micah’s time, we also beg our God to wipe out all our sins and help us to turn totally to him in love and fidelity.
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Saturday of Week 2 of Lent – First Reading
Commentary on Micah 7:14-15,18-20
Today’s Mass readings are about God’s great desire that the sinner repent and experience God’s love and tender mercy. The First Reading comes from the prophet Micah, a contemporary of both Hoseah and Isaiah.
The passage consists of a prayer which appears to be from the time after the return of the Jews from exile in Babylon (537 BC). At this time, the people were still few in number, possessed only a fragment of their former land, and were surrounded by hostile nations.
It is a plea for God to take care of his beleaguered people. But there is confidence because their God is quite unlike any other:
Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
and passing over the transgression
of the remnant of his possession?
The passage reflects what Jesus tells us about God in today’s Gospel.
The people may at times deserve the anger of God, but it will never last, for God loves his people too much. In fact, it is difficult to conceive now of a God who responds in anger when his people sin. It is never he who distances himself from us; it is we who are unfaithful.
We can always be sure of his “faithfulness” and of his “steadfast love”, which he had promised so long ago and so many times. He had sworn to Abraham and Jacob that their descendants would be as numerous as the specks of dust of the earth and sand on the seashore, and he had promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. God will not go back on that promise.
And so, we too have confidence of complete forgiveness and reconciliation. This compassion of God for the sinner and his desire to take him back is graphically illustrated in the marvellous story of the Prodigal Son, the subject of today’s Gospel.
We too, whenever we are truly sorry and ready to change, can be absolutely sure of meeting the same compassion and forgiveness.
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