This blog follows the daily bible readings of the Catholic Church

Reading 1, Isaiah 48:17-19

17 Thus says your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the Lord your God and teach you for your own good, I lead you in the way you ought to go.

18 If only you had listened to my commandments! Your prosperity would have been like a river and your saving justice like the waves of the sea.

19 Your descendants would have been numbered like the sand, your offspring as many as its grains. Their name would never be cancelled or blotted out from my presence.

Greater equality good for all

This passage expresses a fundamental belief of ancient Israel: that obedience to God brings material well-being along with less measurable gains like social justice. This is challenging to our more sceptical ears. We don’t see obedience to God producing the goodies in quite this way; rather we see obedience as always under the sign of the cross. Israel’s faith was that God’s way was not arbitrary: it was actually good for human beings. This is a truth we must cherish even as we recognise the suffering sometimes entailed in living it.

The “Spirit Level (Wilkinson and Pickett. Penguin) is an appealing book which reminds us that by a set of objective measurements, countries with greater equality have greater well-being than those with greater inequality. This thesis has aroused the fury of right wing commentators in the UK, but I think Isaiah would have taken its truth for granted.

Gospel, Matthew 11:16-19

16 ‘What comparison can I find for this generation? It is like children shouting to each other as they sit in the market place:17 We played the pipes for you, and you wouldn’t dance; we sang dirges, and you wouldn’t be mourners.

18 ‘For John came, neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He is possessed.”19 The Son of man came, eating and drinking, and they say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.’

one of wisdom's deeds

Jesus’ humour is evident here. He compares his contemporaries’ views of John the Baptist and himself to children who’ll play neither sad nor glad. God’s wisdom, he says, does its best to cater for all tastes, but some people are never satisfied. In a deeper sense God’s wisdom is justified because both strict prophet and convivial saviour, bad cop and good cop, are expressions of God’s love.