A reading from the prophet Hosea (14:2-10)
Israel, come back to the Lord your God!
Your guilt was the cause of your downfall.
Provide yourself with words and come back to the Lord.
Say to him, ‘Take away all our guilt
and give us what is good
and we will offer the fruit of our lips.
Assyria cannot save us,
we will not ride horses any more
or say, “Our God!” to the work of our hands,
for in you orphans find compassion.’
I shall cure them of their disloyalty,
I shall love them freely,
for my anger has turned away from them.
I shall be like dew on Israel;
he will bloom like the lily
and thrust out roots like the cedar of Lebanon.
He will put out new shoots;
he will have the beauty of the olive tree
and the fragrance of Lebanon.
They will come back to live in my shade;
they will grow wheat again, they will blossom like the vine,
their wine will be as famous as the wine of Lebanon.
What has Ephraim to do with idols any more
when I hear him and watch over him?
I am like an evergreen cypress:
you owe your fruitfulness to me.
Let the wise understand these words,
let the intelligent grasp their meaning,
for the Lord’s ways are straight
and the righteous will walk in them
but sinners will stumble.
Hosea addresses the northern kingdom of Israel, which split from Judah two centuries earlier. Their future is uncertain. Despite this Hosea brings the word of the Lord, who calls the people back. They have trusted for too long in alliances with pagan nations such as Assyria, and dabbled in the worship of idols. The tenderness of God of which the prophet speaks owes much to his own experience as a loyal husband who offers love and forgiveness to his unfaithful wife. God will descend like dew, describing the new condition of the people with rich natural images, such as the lily, the cedar and the olive. God in turn is like an ‘evergreen cypress’. The final words of this reading, which are the last words of the book of Hosea, are an insistent invitation to the wise to heed and understand these words.
Psalm 81 (80) This psalm presents words of God to the people, inviting a new start, and feeding Israel with finest wheat and wild honey.
A reading from the holy gospel according to Mark (12:28-34)
One of the scribes who had heard them debating appreciated that Jesus had given them a good answer, and put a further question to him, ‘Which is the first of all the commandments?’ Jesus replied, ‘This is the first: Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.’ The scribe said to him, ‘Well spoken, teacher; what you have said is true, that he is one and there is no other. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself, this is far more important than whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.’ Jesus, seeing that he had answered wisely, said, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ And after that no one dared to question him any more.
This dialogue with a scribe who was positively impressed by Jesus’ teaching sets a more cordial tone in Jesus’ discussions with religious leaders in Jerusalem. In answer to the scribe’s question about ‘the first of all the commandments’ Jesus quotes the shema and its command to love God (Deuteronomy 6) to which he adds the command to love neighbour (Leviticus 19). The scribe compliments Jesus on his reply, and Jesus, ‘seeing that he had answered wisely’, tells him that he is ‘not far from the kingdom of God’. The encounter of these two minds illustrates the profound accord of Jesus with the tradition, and not surprisingly, at least for the moment, ‘no one dared to question him any more’.
Reflect on the deep bonds of Christian faith with our Jewish roots.
We pray for the wisdom and courage to take up the call to repentance.