Monday Musings - A Nation That Has Turned Its Back To God

Jeremiah was one of the major Old Testament prophets. He was not too successful in changing hearts. but he certainly was faithful in his attempt to do so. Often referred to as “the weeping prophet” his own family turned against him. His countrymen rejected God’s warning which Jeremiah had received of their impending punishment for having turned their backs to God.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Last Thursday, we read the following excerpt from the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, written centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ. (Jer. 7:23-28). Not much attention was given the prophet’s message last week. Over the centuries, this message seems to have fallen on deaf ears and dead souls.

Ponder what God told his prophet and what He wants us to hear anew:

But this command I gave them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ But they did not obey or incline their ear but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts and went backward and not forward.  From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day; yet they did not listen to me, or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers.

“So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. And you shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.

Is the prophet not speaking to those of us living now in 2021? We violently rip infants from their mothers’ wombs and call this act of murder “health care”. We sell parts of these slaughtered and dismembered children (and even sometimes entirely intact fetuses). Since Roe v. Wade we have killed some 60+ million human beings in this country alone. And our leaders unabashedly seek to further facilitate this slaughter here and abroad!

As I pondered this Scripture and these horrific facts while praying alone outside a local Planned Parenthood Facility, I wanted to scream: Where are you America? How long will your citizens acquiesce to and remain silent in the face of this slaughter? How much longer do you think God will withhold His Hands of Justice? Where is our Church?

Human history is replete with examples of man’s stubborn sinfulness, God's just punishment and ultimately a return to His Truth. This has been an unending cycle of the human experience – though many mock and deny this Truth.

If the words of the prophet Jeremiah have not penetrated your indifference to evil incarnate, do your soul an eternal favor and listen to this homily and warning from a contemporary prophet. And if Father’s words fail to cause your conscience to tremble, read what our Blessed Mother may have to say about our future.

Many years ago, the Catholic Bishops consecrated this country to the Blessed Virgin Mary, entrusting our needs to her maternal care and protection. But our nation has turned its back to her and her Son. We are as God told Jeremiah centuries ago a “nation that does not listen to the voice of the Lord, its God, or take correction".

But even now, as my Lay Dominican brother, Lou Pizzuti, often reminds us:

"If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land." 2 Chronicles 7:14

Will we?

May God have mercy on our souls!