20240803 THE PUNISHMENT OF SIN
03 August 2024, Saturday, 17th Week in Ordinary Time
First reading |
Jeremiah 26:11-16,24 |
'This man has spoken to us in the name of the Lord'
The priests and prophets addressed the officials and all the people, ‘This man deserves to die, since he has prophesied against this city, as you have heard with your own ears.’
Jeremiah, however, replied to the people as follows:
‘The Lord himself sent me to say all the things you have heard against this Temple and this city. So now amend your behaviour and actions, listen to the voice of the Lord your God: if you do, he will relent and not bring down on you the disaster he has pronounced against you. For myself, I am as you see in your hands. Do whatever you please or think right with me. But be sure of this, that if you put me to death, you will be bringing innocent blood on yourselves, on this city and on its citizens, since the Lord has truly sent me to you to say all these words in your hearing.’
The officials and all the people then said to the priests and prophets, ‘This man does not deserve to die: he has spoken to us in the name of the Lord our God.’
Jeremiah had a protector in Ahikam son of Shaphan, so he was not handed over to the people to be put to death.
Responsorial Psalm |
Psalm 68(69):15-16,30-31,33-34 |
In your great love, answer me, O God.
Rescue me from sinking in the mud;
save me from my foes.
Save me from the waters of the deep
lest the waves overwhelm me.
Do not let the deep engulf me
nor death close its mouth on me.
In your great love, answer me, O God.
As for me in my poverty and pain
let your help, O God, lift me up.
I will praise God’s name with a song;
I will glorify him with thanksgiving.
In your great love, answer me, O God.
The poor when they see it will be glad
and God-seeking hearts will revive;
for the Lord listens to the needy
and does not spurn his servants in their chains.
In your great love, answer me, O God.
Gospel Acclamation | cf.Lk8:15 |
Alleluia, alleluia!
Blessed are those who,
with a noble and generous heart,
take the word of God to themselves
and yield a harvest through their perseverance.
Alleluia!
Or: | Mt5:10 |
Alleluia, alleluia!
Happy those who are persecuted
in the cause of right,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Alleluia!
Gospel | Matthew 14:1-12 |
The beheading of John the Baptist
Herod the tetrarch heard about the reputation of Jesus, and said to his court, ‘This is John the Baptist himself; he has risen from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.’
Now it was Herod who had arrested John, chained him up and put him in prison because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife. For John had told him, ‘It is against the Law for you to have her.’ He had wanted to kill him but was afraid of the people, who regarded John as a prophet. Then, during the celebrations for Herod’s birthday, the daughter of Herodias danced before the company, and so delighted Herod that he promised on oath to give her anything she asked. Prompted by her mother she said, ‘Give me John the Baptist’s head, here, on a dish.’ The king was distressed but, thinking of the oaths he had sworn and of his guests, he ordered it to be given her, and sent and had John beheaded in the prison. The head was brought in on a dish and given to the girl, who took it to her mother. John’s disciples came and took the body and buried it; then they went off to tell Jesus.
THE PUNISHMENT OF SIN
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [JER 26:11-16, 24; MT 14:1-12]
Quite often, when people meet with tragedies in life, failures, illnesses and sufferings, their immediate conclusion is that God is punishing them for their sins. This is not true because God does not desire us to suffer. He is not a vindictive God. Rather, He is a most compassionate and forgiving God. The Lord said, “Repent and turn from all your transgressions; otherwise iniquity will be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.” (Ezekiel 18:30-32) In John’s gospel, Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (Jn 3:16) So it is not true that God wants to inflict suffering on us. Rather, He wants to spare us from the punishment of sin.
When we sin, it is not so much that God is punishing us but it is sin that punishes us. St Paul wrote, “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit.” (Gal 6:7f) Suffering is the consequence of our sins because it follows natural laws. As the Lord taught in the Sermon on the Mount, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” (Mt 7:12)
Jeremiah was sent by the Lord to warn his people of the imminent destruction of the Temple and the land if they did not repent. He repeated what he said earlier at the Temple, “The Lord himself sent me to say all the things you have heard against this Temple and this city. So now amend your behaviour and actions, listen to the voice of the Lord your God: if you do, he will relent and not bring down on you the disaster he has pronounced against you.” It was not true what the priests and prophets were accusing him of – cursing the Temple and the city. He only warned them of the consequences so that if they repented, they would avoid the disasters. However, the religious leaders only focused on the bad news but not on the call to repentance. True enough, the Temple was eventually destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BC and the priests and the prophets became beggars as they lost their positions.
King Herod Antipas also had to pay a huge price for his adulterous relationship with Herodias. By marrying Herodias, he brought a vicious woman into his life. The irony was that the woman he loved would be the woman who would ruin his life. By marrying her, he broke not just the law of the indissolubility of marriage; he broke the Mosaic Law of incest. (cf Lev 18:16; 20:21) Furthermore, by stealing his brother’s wife, he incurred the wrath both of the legal wife’s family and his brother as well. His wife, being a Nabatean Arab princess whom he married for political alliance to secure loyalty from the Nabatean subjects within his territory of Perea, now turned against him. He angered his father-in-law, the powerful Nabatean King Aretas. A war ensued and Herod was eventually defeated.
Most of all, Herod paid the price of a guilty conscience. When he heard about the influential ministry of Jesus, he said, “This is John the Baptist himself; he has risen from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.” The guilt of beheading a prophet of God whom he knew and recognized lay heavy on his shoulders. He carried this guilt all his life and it caused him to imagine that John the Baptist had come back to life to take revenge on him. Perhaps it could also be that John the Baptist, being the cousin of our Lord, also resembled Jesus and thus the confusion of identity. Regardless, it was his guilt that made him live in fear of punishment from God and retaliation from John.
We, too, are like King Herod. We have to pay a price for our sins and negligence. When we are irresponsible with our lives, we have to bear the consequences, whether it is with our studies, work, or family life. When we do not study hard, all our peers will move forward in life whilst we are left behind. When we are negligent and slipshod in our work, we cannot expect to be promoted or have our salary increases. In fact, if the company does not dismiss us, we should be grateful for the compassion of our boss. However, saddest of all is that when we are irresponsible in our marriage and family life, we cause our family to break up and our spouse and children to leave us. This would be the most unforgivable mistake in our life. Above all, we will carry a guilty conscience for the rest of our life, unable to forgive ourselves because of what we have done or failed to do. We live in fear of God’s punishment and our conscience will have no peace even though we might try to suppress it. As a result, we hurt not just ourselves but those whom we love.
However, this is not yet the biggest punishment for our sins. If we are carrying the consequences of our sins, and we learn from them, then the punishment has done us good. Indeed, as the author of Hebrews tells us, “Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness. Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” (Heb 12:7,10,11)
The real punishment of sin is sin itself. We grow in sinfulness if we do nothing to stop it. When we are blind, we will end up doing more harmful things to ourselves because we cannot see. So, too, when sin enters our heart, it has a foothold in us. Like cancer cells, it will grow from strength to strength. A person who denies God will only have himself to rely on. He becomes insecure and trusts no one but himself. This will lead him to commit more crimes. He will seek to justify himself and rationalize his evil deeds. Eventually, he becomes hostile to God and blind to the truth. We see this happening in the world. Secularism, which denies God, leads to relativism of values. This will lead to materialism and a hedonistic life. Eventually, so consumed by the world and our sensuality, we will forget that our spirit thirsts for fulfilment. This will lead us to self-destruct and self-annihilate – the final step to end our misery.
We see this in Herod and Herodias, how one sin led to another sin. From his adulterous marriage with Herodias, he lived in guilt and shame. John the Baptist constantly reprimanded him for his immoral misconduct. This also caused tension in his relationship with Herodias on one hand, and tension with the first wife’s family. He failed to realize that Herodias was a vicious woman who could not tolerate the public shame that John the Baptist had done to her. She planned and connived with her daughter, Salome, to shamelessly dance before the King on his birthday. Herod was taken by surprise and was amused at the outrageous suggestive dancing of his step-daughter that he promised her any request she made. Instigated by her mother, she said, “Give me John the Baptist’s head, here, on a dish.” Again, King Herod could have rejected the immoral request, but he was a weak king with no values. He was more worried about how people might gauge him than whether he was doing the right thing. So “he ordered it to be given her, and sent and had John beheaded in the prison.”
The moral of today’s scripture reading is that if we commit sin, we will have to bear the consequences of our sins. If we do not learn from the mistakes we have made, then our sins will cause us to sin even further, leading us from the frying pan into the fire. Perhaps the other great lesson we can learn is never to destroy the person whom we love. Herodias loved Herod, but her love for Herod led her to cause Herod to sin further because of her vindictiveness. If we love someone, we must protect the person we love. This is especially true of parents’ love for their children. By spoiling them, they do not grow in maturity and in love. We must love them rightly.
Written by His Eminence, Cardinal William SC Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All Rights Reserved.
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