DAILY- HOMILY

Ezekiel spoke of the glory of the Lord rising out of the Temple and leaving the city. It was, I commented, the final break between Yahweh and his people. But it wasn't, was it? There is never any final separation of Yahweh from Israel, of God our Father from us.

The beautiful allegory in today's first reading, describes Jerusalem as the girl-baby rejected by her parents, thrown out on the ground to die and rot, with no one to bestow on her the care and love she needs to live. To some extent the reading is ghastly, but beautiful is Yahweh's love for Jerusalem. It is his love for her that makes the girl-baby grow to beautiful adulthood. Yahweh swore an oath to her and entered into a covenant of marriage with her. "You became mine," he tells her.

Unfortunately, Jerusalem knew how beautiful she was, and used her beauty to make herself a famous harlot, giving herself to every pagan god who came her way. Is it time yet for the final, definitive break? "Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you when you were a girl," Yahweh tells her, "and I will set up an everlasting covenant with you, that you may remember and be covered with confusion, and that you may be utterly silenced for shame when I pardon you for all you have done, says Yahweh."

Should this surprise us? Yahweh, after all, is the father in Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son. God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, will no more insist on final, definitive breaks than did Yahweh in the days of the Old Testament.