By Regis Martin, Crisis Magazine, Oct. 3, 2024
Regis Martin is Professor of Theology and Faculty Associate with the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. He earned a licentiate and a doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome.
If crisis bespeaks judgment, then we are no less under the judgment of God than our forerunners the Jews, who first breached the covenant with God.
A holy and learned confessor once advised a penitent to enter each day into a prayerful reading of the Old Testament. “It’s good,” he would say, “to have Iron Age words in your mouth every day.” Especially these days, he might have added, when so few either read or pray at all. We live in the Age of the Afterword.
So, heeding his advice, I’ve been looking into Ezekiel who, having lived six centuries before the coming of Christ, certainly qualifies. Perhaps less of an Iron Age author than, say, Moses or David or Solomon, but not exactly a newcomer, either. And to make that exercise easier, the Church, in her wisdom, scheduled ten readings from the lectionary last month, each carefully selected from among the forty-eight chapters of the book he wrote—which happens to be among the longest books in the Bible, by the way, not to mention one of the most quotable. …
