#god's anger

[sundaynightservice]

When God is angry

because men delight in sin

darkness settles in

and restlessness is the norm

eating away peace and joy.

.

D W Eldred

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

God's Anger over Jerusalem

5 The Lord was like an enemy! He left Israel in ruins with its palaces and fortresses destroyed, and with everyone in Judah moaning and weeping.

6 He shattered his temple like a hut in a garden; he completely wiped out his meeting place, and did away with festivals and Sabbaths in the city of Zion. In his fierce anger he rejected our king and priests.

7 The Lord abandoned his altar and his temple; he let Zion's enemies capture her fortresses. Noisy shouts were heard from the temple, as if it were a time of celebration. — Lamentations 2:5-7 | Contemporary English Version Interconfessional Edition (CEVIE) The Contemporary English Version Interconfessional Edition Bible is © American Bible Society. All rights reserved. Cross References: Exodus 29:42-43; Job 19:11; Psalm 78:60; Isaiah 1:8; Isaiah 1:11-13; Isaiah 63:10; Jeremiah 14:12; Hosea 8:8; Hosea 8:11-13

Read full chapter

Notes: Lamentations 2:5-7 describes God acting as an enemy against Judah, devastating the city of Jerusalem, its defenses, and the Temple. The text emphasizes that God intentionally destroyed the kingdom's strongholds and sanctuaries, bringing complete destruction to the people.

[wiirocku]

Romans 5:9 (CEV) - But there is more! Now that God has accepted us because Christ sacrificed His life’s blood, we will also be kept safe from God’s anger.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for the Nativity of St John the Baptist

Isa 49:1-6; Ps 138; Acts 13:22-26; Luke 1:57-66, 80

As we know there are only three birthdays celebrated in the Church’s sacred Liturgy: the birthday of Christ, of course, and then the birthday of Our Lady, and today, the birthday of St John the Baptist. Otherwise, we try when possible to celebrate the birthdays of saints into heaven, that is, their ‘transitus’, the day of their death in this earthly life. Hence, for example, St Dominic’s birthday is on 8 August, the nearest available date in the liturgical calendar to the day of his death, 6 August. So, why do we celebrate these three birthdays of Our Lord, Our Lady, and St John the Baptist? It’s seldom commented upon in sermons these days, but the Fathers of the Church and the medieval commentators were clear that these three were born without sin: Our Lord, by his nature; Our Lady, by a singular grace at her conception that preserved her from sin; and St John, who was sanctified in the womb. 

For the incident of the Visitation, which we know well in this Rosary Shrine, wasn’t just about the meeting of Our Lady and St Elizabeth. Something happened in the womb of Elizabeth, for when she heard the greeting of Our Blessed Mother, and when the Redeemer in the womb drew near, the Holy Spirit moved St John the Baptist to leap in the womb. The Holy Spirit, in fact, by this act, sanctified St John in the womb, so that he was born without sin, and was thus prepared in the womb for his mission as the Precursor of the Saviour. 

The readings in today’s feast thus beautifully speak of the sanctity of the womb: Isaiah says: "now the Lord has spoken,he who formed me in the womb to be his servant", and the psalmist says: “it was you who created my being, knit me together in my mother’s womb.I thank you for the wonder of my being, for the wonders of all your creation. Already you knew my soul, my body held no secret from youwhen I was being fashioned in secret  and moulded in the depths of the earth.” So, Sacred Scripture today points to the sanctity of the womb as that ‘place’ where God’s grace is at work, preparing each human person, sacred from the moment of conception, for a special mission that God, in the secret and hidden place of the womb, gives to that person. The womb is that little space in which great things take place for God’s grace is invisibly at work in the womb, in the soul of the unborn. 

Therefore, it was with great anguish and some anger that I learnt this weekend, on the feast of that holy lawyer, St Thomas More, that an English judge had arrogated to herself the power to execute a child in the womb. The facts of the case, as we currently know it, can be read here: a mentally disabled girl is deemed unable to be a mother and, despite the girl’s mother, a midwife, being willing to adopt and raise her grandchild, the Court decides that the baby should be aborted. And this is supposedly in the ‘best interest’ of the pregnant girl, which is the worst interest of the unborn child’s! So the sanctity of the womb is violated; the womb which God protects for it is a graced place where life is formed and one’s vocation is instilled, is violated. But no one, no authority, and certainly no human person should dare to violate the sanctity of the womb and decide that a baby in utero should not live; that it should be aborted, which is to murder it, or for the State to execute it. To dare to do so is to call down the wrath of God! 

And this country is surely experiencing the wrath of God. For, make no mistake, the anger of God is not manifest by thunderbolts, or plagues, or other such pagan ideas. The wrath of God, St Paul says, is manifest through moral blindness, through hearts hardened by sin, and how dark indeed is the moral state of our country as this latest ‘judgement’ shows. The mercy of God, therefore, is the grace of conversion, and time in which to repent. We pray for the mercy of God upon our country. And this grace, too, which is a great happening takes place in a small ‘place’.

And this is entirely consonant with how God acts. Recently I was in the Holy Land, and I visited the village of Ein Kerem where the holy family of Zechariah, Elizabeth and St John lived; where Our Lady and Our Lord visited them. Here in this humble, little place, St John received his vocation, was born, and grew up. And I noticed, too, how little and humble are the places where Our Lord worked out our salvation. The distance from the Cross to the Empty Tomb is barely more than the distance from this pulpit here to the front door of our church. And yet, in this little place, Christ won our salvation and opened the gates of heaven. So, too, in the little place of the womb, God call the human soul to greatness and to perfection; he gives each human person a personal mission. And God’s mercy also is worked out in a little place. His grace invisibly converting us in that little place, so to speak, of our hearts. Each of our hearts, if it is open to God’s action, is a locus in which God’s grace acts to do great things; to save us; to convert us; to bring us to repentance; to perfect the marvel of his call to holiness in each of us. 

So, each of us, can, in this country, contribute to averting the wrath of God. May St John the Baptist pray for us – pray for our country – and may the holy families of Nazareth and Ein Kerem protect the unborn child, and make the womb to be a place of sanctity once more. 

[quotesfromscripture]

Then another angel, a third, followed them, crying with a loud voice, 'Those who worship the beast and its image, and receive a mark on their foreheads or on their hands, they will also drink the wine of God's wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and they will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.'

Revelation 14:9-10 NRSV

[craigtowens]

“Want to anger God? Get in the way of people who want to see Him.” —Max Lucado, On Calvary’s Hill

[quarkmaster]

God's Anger

Stéphane Wootha Richard