Commentary on the Gospel of
There is always a certain disproportion between what others see about us and what moves us more deeply; between what others think we deserve and what God grants us to deserve. Sometimes this disproportion is enormous, practically insurmountable. In a different way, today’s readings make us aware of this contrast by inviting us to look where God looks.
When the most lucid men in Israel contemplated its people, it was not difficult for them to notice that infidelity seemed to be transmitted as a damn from generation to generation. They were a people who had been given a deeper experience of God than any other; however, they keep turning their faces to YAHWH, like the adulterer who, having love at home, unfeelingly seeks it outside. The prophet Hosea reflects this vision, presenting Israel as a prostitute who, even having found a husband, continually returns to her own district.
God looks at his people from another place. In fact, it is God Himself who urges Hosea to marry the prostitute and, when she relapses into her old ways, makes the promise that we hear today in the first reading. He sees his people as a beautiful woman
with whom he can still have a full relationship. And she does not tire: God promises to take her to the desert a thousand times to declare her passion there, to marry her "in right and justice, in mercy and compassion, in fidelity." We see the ruin of a stubborn people; God sees love as always possible.
Something similar happens in the reading of the Gospel of Matthew offered to us today. Where many see the death of the girl and the impurity of the hemorrhoid, Jesus sees the life and hope that faith engenders. Matthew says that those who were there "laughed at him." The blind scoffed at the only one who knew how to look. How cruel sometimes is that distance between human judgments and divine compassion! And how good it is to speak to God when life overwhelms us! Then, only then, with His gaze do we drop the veils and, in the desert, "we penetrate the Lord".
