We must renew our covenant with God

March 2, 2003 -- 8th Sunday in Ordinary Time

	Fr. Richard Ver Bust

If you were like me growing up, you probably learned that the God of the Old Testament was a God of justice. God ruled by law and punished those who broke the law. You learned that the God of the New Testament, on the other hand, was a God of love who reached out in Jesus to express that love.

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The first reading is one which people must have overlooked in describing God as a punishing God. There could hardly be a better expression of God's love than the one we hear from Hosea. Hosea speaks of God as a God who romantically calls Israel into a covenant of love.

Hosea looks back at the experience of Israel during the Exodus as a kind of honeymoon or as a time of an engagement. He talks of God as renewing that time and bringing Israel back to the desert to recreate that wonderful experience in which Israel first came to know God. The words are passionate and romantic. So now Israel, whom elsewhere Hosea says has been unfaithful to God, must return to a time of innocence. God still loves the people of Israel and wants to renew the covenant made with her. The words and language Hosea uses are of engagement and marriage. When he says, "and you shall know the Lord," he is thinking of much more than an intellectual grasp of God. He is speaking of an intimate experience of God. All of these words reveal to us a God who, even in the Old Testament, expresses love even when sometimes it is "tough" love.

The responsorial psalm and refrain echo these thoughts. The psalmist sings of a God who is kind and merciful. God pardons our sins and we bless him for that reason. Listen to the words of the psalm which says, "Merciful and gracious is the Lord, slow to anger and abounding in kindness."

Mark too builds upon these thoughts when he tells us Jesus used a parable in which the imagery of a wedding feast was used. The episode is one in which Jesus once more is tested. So he uses a parable to answer the test. In the parable, the bridegroom comes and feasting occurs. It is hardly a time for fasting but one of celebration. There will be a future time in which fasting will again be appropriate. Interestingly this reading occurs on the Sunday before the beginning of Lent.

In Jesus' time, the center of attention tended to be the bridegroom and the men present. While the parable does bring this out, it is not meant to put down the bride and the women present. Mark wants to identify Jesus with the bridegroom, hence the emphasis.

Two other parables are used to illustrate the thought of Jesus and Mark. The old cloth and the wineskin help us to understand the message. The old cloth will tear when one puts a new cloth with it that is unwashed and, therefore, unshrunken. So too when you put new wine with all of its intense ingredients and power to mature, it will make an old wineskin break apart.

The love God has for us emerges . This is a promise made to disciples of Jesus. We must make a total commitment. We know that marriage means the beginning of a new life for a couple. So too our relationship with Christ demands a new way of living. We too are espoused to God and the coming season of Lent will help us realize this relationship.

(Fr. Ver Bust holds the title of professor emeritus in religious studies at St. Norbert College, De Pere.)