Saint Volodymyr

The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah is, for some reason, hitting at me or at my thoughts most insistently in these days. Whether I find his message for me today impelling or haunting is hard to say. As a part for the whole let me take the 1st Reading from this Saturday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time:

The following message came to Jeremiah from the LORD: Stand at the gate of the house of the LORD, and there proclaim this message: Hear the word of the LORD, all you of Judah who enter these gates to worship the LORD! Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Reform your ways and your deeds, so that I may remain with you in this place. Put not your trust in the deceitful words: "This is the temple of the LORD! The temple of the LORD! The temple of the LORD!" Only if you thoroughly reform your ways and your deeds; if each of you deals justly with his neighbor; if you no longer oppress the resident alien, the orphan, and the widow; if you no longer shed innocent blood in this place, or follow strange gods to your own harm, will I remain with you in this place, in the land I gave your fathers long ago and forever. But here you are, putting your trust in deceitful words to your own loss! Are you to steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal, go after strange gods that you know not, and yet come to stand before me in this house which bears my name, and say: "We are safe; we can commit all these abominations again?" Has this house which bears my name become in your eyes a den of thieves? I too see what is being done, says the LORD. {Jeremiah 7:1-11}

The question which arises is an old one for me, which I never quite answer to my own satisfaction: Why should the prophet's verdict go any easier on us today? Can we withdraw ourselves from the judgment of the Lord if we have little more to recommend ourselves than did Jeremiah's interlocutors at the time of the Babylonian Captivity? Maybe despite the fact that no one seems to have carried off the material treasures of the visible temple, maybe even so we find ourselves destitute and in exile? 

Just yesterday, I was troubled by the "optimism" or superficiality of an Olympic themed video apology for the Church's investing heavily in sports training as a way to recover our troubled and confused youth (see CNS). It could be that the featured chaplain is on to something, but I am rather inclined to listen to an old and respected coach who observed that sports today is little more than a mirror of that society of ours which seems to be in free fall: young individual performers with no life beyond training and competition for medals, team sports in decline, drugs, sex and violence invading the playing fields and locker rooms. At home, in the newspaper, I read a piece about a graduating senior girl who had been on her high school's boys wrestling team but was looking at a scholarship from a girls team for college; she didn't have the upper body strength for college men's wrestling, she said. Granted, it was a public high school, but this is one of  myriad examples one could cite to illustrate why "sports" is not necessarily the lighthouse pointing to the safe harbor in the midst of youthful turbulence. 

Elsewhere (Chapter 24) Jeremiah speaks of two baskets of figs: one good and one bad. The good figs would represent those carried off into exile in Babylon, now busily putting together an ordered life for themselves far from home and temple, and the bad were those left behind or clinging to the Land, the Temple and appearances. "But here you are, putting your trust in deceitful words to your own loss! Are you to steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal, go after strange gods that you know not, and yet come to stand before me in this house which bears my name, and say: "We are safe; we can commit all these abominations again?" Has this house which bears my name become in your eyes a den of thieves? I too see what is being done, says the LORD."

The continued existence of the temple is not the assurance. Mark's Gospel begins with a call to repentance. I don't know how we can get around consistently, credibly pronouncing judgment in God's Name, just like a genuine Old Testament prophet, just like Jeremiah. I suppose the consumption which accompanies Olympic games, like the forty million something spent on the opening ceremony in London, may say something noble about the human spirit... Just try and convince me! Just try and argue that direct aid to alleviate suffering is a bad investment because it doesn't address the roots of the problem or problems which occasion misery.What would Jeremiah say about all the blood shed today: in abortion clinics, through euthanasia, by destabilizing regions, trading arms and drugs? Granted, many of those movers and shakers claim no need for the traditional temple, but they are not without their so-called sanctuaries.

Yesterday, in my last Ukrainian class before the summer break, my prof had me read a little story about a wise old man, wealthy, who with death approaching called his only son and handed over his money to him, telling him to travel and make homes for himself everywhere to which he might turn in time of need. Time passed and the son returned to his father, who asked him how his expedition went. The young man described having spent money to built palatial little places on every height and along every stream which suited his fancy. Old Dad lost his patience and labeled the son a fool for not having understood the import of his words and, namely, that he should have used the money to help others such that in time of need they would in turn welcome him.

I'm not going to condemn investing in sports, that would be wrong. I think I'll let Jeremiah sink in a bit more and invite my readers to do the same. Neither the stadium nor the temple as such is the guarantee of that which makes for life to the full, namely living in the presence and according to the will of the only GOD, living and true. We speak quite glibly of the "domestic Church" with little or no understanding that we, as parents or as presbyters, are responsible for mediating in that context and beyond the loving presence of the God Who made us and saved us and Who calls us to Himself in glory.

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