So let's talk about today's readings 2/11/10

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February 11, 2010
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Reading I
1 Kgs 11:4-13
When Solomon was old his wives had turned his heart to strange gods,
and his heart was not entirely with the LORD, his God,
as the heart of his father David had been.
By adoring Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians,
and Milcom, the idol of the Ammonites,
Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD;
he did not follow him unreservedly as his father David had done.
Solomon then built a high place to Chemosh, the idol of Moab,
and to Molech, the idol of the Ammonites,
on the hill opposite Jerusalem.
He did the same for all his foreign wives
who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.
The LORD, therefore, became angry with Solomon,
because his heart was turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel,
who had appeared to him twice
(for though the LORD had forbidden him
this very act of following strange gods,
Solomon had not obeyed him).
So the LORD said to Solomon: “Since this is what you want,
and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes
which I enjoined on you,
I will deprive you of the kingdom and give it to your servant.
I will not do this during your lifetime, however,
for the sake of your father David;
it is your son whom I will deprive.
Nor will I take away the whole kingdom.
I will leave your son one tribe for the sake of my servant David
and of Jerusalem, which I have chosen.”

Responsorial Psalm
106:3-4, 35-36, 37 and 40
R. (4a) Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.
Blessed are they who observe what is right,
who do always what is just.
Remember us, O LORD, as you favor your people;
visit us with your saving help.
R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.
But they mingled with the nations
and learned their works.
They served their idols,
which became a snare for them.
R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.
They sacrificed their sons
and their daughters to demons.
And the LORD grew angry with his people,
and abhorred his inheritance.
R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.

Gospel

Mk 7:24-30
Jesus went to the district of Tyre.
He entered a house and wanted no one to know about it,
but he could not escape notice.
Soon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him.
She came and fell at his feet.
The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth,
and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.
He said to her, “Let the children be fed first.
For it is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs.”
She replied and said to him,
“Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”
Then he said to her, “For saying this, you may go.
The demon has gone out of your daughter.”
When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed
and the demon gone.
 
“When Solomon was old his wives had turned his heart to strange gods”
– Isn’t this just like Adam, who told God, “It was that woman You put here, she
gave it to me”. Solomon was the wisest man in the world, he knew better.
And so does so does the president of the United States know better than to
sacrifice children. It seems I am actually smarter than both king Solomon, and
the president of the United States. What good is all that knowledge if you’re
going to use it to make such horrific mistakes?

“They sacrificed their sons
and their daughters to demons.
And the LORD grew angry with his people”
– It sure takes a lot to make God angry. What is He waiting for? If He would
just grow angry a little sooner, then maybe some of these things wouldn’t
happen. Of course, then I guess We’d all be out of luck too…

“She replied and said to him,
“Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.””
– I guess that’s what we are currently doing: eating the scraps that the
Israelites left behind, until “the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled”…
“that great and terrible day”. Yet the Catholic Church is an awfully big “scrap”.
I guess Jesus had planned on giving it to the Jews. What a banquet we are
enjoying, and we’re not even in heaven yet!

Today is the day of Our Lady of Lourdes. Lourdes is that place in France where
there is healing water discovered by St. Bernadette. She has her own day on
another day.

So what struck you about today’s readings? :bible1::twocents:
 
How I LOVE this apparition.



Long live Our Lady of Lourdes.

Glory be to GOD!!👍
 
The O.T. reading is one of those parts of Scripture that really makes me go, “Hhmmm.”
How could Solomon, who had been given the gift of wisdom from God, turn away from Him?!
I mean, it just seems that it would have been impossible if he had been given Wisdom, with a capital W, to fall away.
(Could this reading also be used to argue against OSAS?)
And, as has been pointed out all already, not just to lose the plot a little bit, but to start sacrificing children? :eek:

The other thing that I wondered about was why God punished not Solomon, but his son.
 
The O.T. reading is one of those parts of Scripture that really makes me go, “Hhmmm.”
How could Solomon, who had been given the gift of wisdom from God, turn away from Him?!
I mean, it just seems that it would have been impossible if he had been given Wisdom, with a capital W, to fall away.
(Could this reading also be used to argue against OSAS?)
And, as has been pointed out all already, not just to lose the plot a little bit, but to start sacrificing children? :eek:

The other thing that I wondered about was why God punished not Solomon, but his son.
God did the same thing with David. He punished his baby. I am sure the baby was
innocent, but I am sure that the son of Solomon wasn’t. I don’t really consider it
much of a punishment to have a kingdom taken away. After all, I don’t have a
kingdom, so am I being punished? 🙂
 
The story of Solomon is such a lesson for us all. Here this man started out strong with every advantage: He inherited a great kingdom from his father David; he was given wisdom and riches and power and all the good things that a man could want. And it seems that he really did love the Lord and want to serve him. The previous readings of this week were effusive in praising him and left little doubt of the greatness of this man and the splendor of his reign.

But something happened to Solomon in his later years. In spite of his great blessings (or maybe as a result of them) he began to grow complacent in his own greatness (one can’t help but think of a famous athlete in the news recently who has had a similar fall).

Solomon began to compromise, listening to the pleadings of his pagan wives to build idols to their gods. One can just hear them: “Oh please, darling, all I want is just one little shrine to Moloch on a high place close by. Is that too much to ask?” He began to oppress and over-tax his people to maintain the lifestyle he had become famous for-- was this an attempt to hang on to youth and glamour and glitz and all the things people had always flattered him about? Instead of maturing gracefully, how many of us act and dress like silly and reckless adolescents because we don’t want others (especially the opposite sex) to think we are “has beens” or not “with it”?

If Solomon would have held tight to his first love of the Lord, he would have finished gloriously and his kingdom would not have dissolved so quickly after his death (it was clear that his heir was a pampered, spoiled man-child who was never taught to be a wise king). We have a lot to learn from this story.
 
The story of Solomon is such a lesson for us all. Here this man started out strong with every advantage: He inherited a great kingdom from his father David; he was given wisdom and riches and power and all the good things that a man could want. And it seems that he really did love the Lord and want to serve him. The previous readings of this week were effusive in praising him and left little doubt of the greatness of this man and the splendor of his reign.

But something happened to Solomon in his later years. In spite of his great blessings (or maybe as a result of them) he began to grow complacent in his own greatness (one can’t help but think of a famous athlete in the news recently who has had a similar fall).

Solomon began to compromise, listening to the pleadings of his pagan wives to build idols to their gods. One can just hear them: “Oh please, darling, all I want is just one little shrine to Moloch on a high place close by. Is that too much to ask?” He began to oppress and over-tax his people to maintain the lifestyle he had become famous for-- was this an attempt to hang on to youth and glamour and glitz and all the things people had always flattered him about? Instead of maturing gracefully, how many of us act and dress like silly and reckless adolescents because we don’t want others (especially the opposite sex) to think we are “has beens” or not “with it”?

If Solomon would have held tight to his first love of the Lord, he would have finished gloriously and his kingdom would not have dissolved so quickly after his death (it was clear that his heir was a pampered, spoiled man-child who was never taught to be a wise king). We have a lot to learn from this story.
This was an enjoyable description of the story, Thank you so much! but what DO
we have to learn? Power corrupts even the best Christians? Don’t be complacent
with God’s favor, you still have to “be good”, just like everybody else? You say the
lesson is hold tight to your first love of the Lord, but it’s still such a mystery how
Solomon, or David before him could ever forget God? I don’t think God spoke to
Tiger Woods…
 
…it’s still such a mystery how Solomon, or David before him could ever forget God?
There was a difference between David and Solomon. David sinned often, and sometimes very grieviously, but he always repented before God – stayed “a man after God’s own heart” to the very end. He was a sinner, but he knew it, and managed to finish strong.

Solomon started out with every advantage, but gradually let himself be lured away by the world. His was a slippery-slope, incremental slide to unfaithfulness to the Lord, and there is no record of Solomon coming to repentance after his apostasy.
I don’t think God spoke to Tiger Woods…
Well, I kind of think in a way he must have – the same way God speaks to all of us. At some point in his wildly successful career, Tiger must have asked himself: other people work as hard or harder than me at my craft: Why am I so much more successful than they? And: Other people are blessed with natural talent: Why do I have so much sucess and they don’t? I think at this point somewhere along the line, instead of recognizing that he was especially blessed and that all he had came from outside of him (a gift from God, even), he seems to have come to the conclusion that it was all his by rights and, not satisfied with that, that he further had the right to acquire whatever he wanted – even what did not belong to him.

God doesn’t have to speak directly to us like he did to Solomon – he is constantly trying to speak to our conscience. Our response depends on the obstacles we do or not place in his way.
 
I suppose this reminds me of the West as a whole. It’s not just the leaders who have turned away. I remember my old Protestant pastor once making the comment that “Once most Americans had a working knowledge of the Bible, but it’s the devil’s territory now, well and truly.” He wasn’t much more sympathetic to his fellow Australians viz. “I think
God’s sick and tired of condemning them.”

In one of his sermons he commented, “If we keep going the way we are, I see nothing ahead of us but judgment.”

We’ve both gone from being people who fought bravely and well in two World Wars, and in particular opposed the blatant evil of fascist imperialism at a high cost. We’ve both degenerated into societies which slaughter their own unborn children by the tens of thousands, with a rampant drug culture, an entertainment media dominated by Hollywood’s ideals, greed and economic inequality, and gross hypocrisy.

I sometimes think God is waiting till most of the Second World War vets shuffle off this mortal coil before He starts acting in terrible judgement. Since many of them lived through the Great Depression also, and had to rebuild their socities after the war, He probably feels they had enough to endure. That’s my little peculiar belief. Now the youngest of them is nudging eighty years of age, or older, with limited time to live anyway.

Looking around, I think retribution might be on its way. Like Soloman, we turned away from Him a long time ago.
 
God doesn’t have to speak directly to us like he did to Solomon – he is constantly trying to speak to our conscience. Our response depends on the obstacles we do or not place in his way.
Oh what a million-dollar statement, words to live by!
Excellent points on Tiger Woods, and the big difference between David & Solomon.
Have you read what GraceSofia has to say? What kind of wisdom did Solomon
get? Big W or small w?
 
Looking around, I think retribution might be on its way. Like Soloman, we turned away from Him a long time ago.
That’s a very interesting idea about the world war II vets…
However, I see things getting better, right alongside things getting worse.
They are both growing together, like the wheat and tares…
We didn’t turn away from Him, did we? You and I?
Abortion will be defeated, just like slavery before it, there are too many good people.
Remember 9/11 when planned parenthood offered free abortions to all those who
lost their husbands? No One said yes. They All said “no thank you” to more death.
And I heard that Haitians are converting to Christianity because of this disaster.
Christians are helping them, and they are now interested in Jesus…🙂
 
That’s a very interesting idea about the world war II vets…
However, I see things getting better, right alongside things getting worse.
They are both growing together, like the wheat and tares…
We didn’t turn away from Him, did we? You and I?
Abortion will be defeated, just like slavery before it, there are too many good people.
Remember 9/11 when planned parenthood offered free abortions to all those who
lost their husbands? No One said yes. They All said “no thank you” to more death.
And I heard that Haitians are converting to Christianity because of this disaster.
Christians are helping them, and they are now interested in Jesus…🙂
As a whole there’s been a decline in the number of practising Christians in the West.

You might find the following article helpful. It does talk about an increase in Christianity in the “South” ie. the Third World and other non-Western areas. But the West has seen a big decline, particularly in Europe (which I think will go Islamic for mainly political and economic reasons, during an oil crisis. It won’t be very sincere, mainly lip service, but it will cause huge problems for the Vatican obviously. That’s my opinion anyway.)

christianpost.com/article/20040306/scholars-find-decline-of-christianity-in-the-west/index.html
 
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