12 July 2024 - Friday of the 14th week - even-numbered year
Hosea 14, 2-10; Matthew 10, 16-23
Homily
Today's first reading continues yesterday's beautiful text from the prophet Hosea, calling us to conversion. He calls us to return to the Lord by speaking to him. The formula is both beautiful and surprising: " Take words with you and return to the Lord ". We sometimes wonder whether it is really necessary to use words in our prayer, since God knows in advance everything we are going to say to him. And yet the prophet tells us " Take with you words...". It's because God wants to meet us on our own ground, to converse with us in human language. In the Old Testament, we could say that this was anthropomorphism. But in the New Testament, God became one of us and spoke to us in our own language. The Word of God became human speech. So we can - and must - speak to him. In reality, it is not He who needs to. We do.