Fools like God

Feast of St. Justin Martyr

Today's readings both speak about people who act, in the world's eyes, foolishly.  First there is Tobit, who persistently insists on providing proper burial for his kinsmen despite the fact that, in Ninevah, this is a capital offense.  Then, there is God Himself, who repeatedly sends messengers to His people, hoping that they will accept at least one of them.  

Whenever I read this Gospel passage, I wonder: why doesn't God know any better?  I've heard it said that the definition of a fool is someone who does the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.  If so, God must be an idiot.  Repeatedly He sends us messengers, and repeatedly we reject them, persecute them, destroy them.

In the past He sent us prophets.  Now He sends us His only Son.  That Son dwells within us by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Yet repeatedly we kill the Son within us when we sin, when we are selfish, when we refuse to forgive those who have hurt us, when we we make idols of ourselves.  But God persists.

What makes God act like a fool?  Love.  He loves us, He loves us, He loves us.  We can beat Him, scourge Him, crucify Him, and yet He will continue to turn up at our door, smiling foolishly, a fool in love.  

When we defy the laws of the world in order to follow the laws of God's love, we may be considered foolish.  Tobit disobeyed the unjust laws of Ninevah in order to follow God's law because he loved God and loved his countrymen.  Today's feast is about a similar fool: Justin Martyr, who, like Tobit, committed a capital offense by refusing to sacrifice to the Roman Empire's gods.  

Today, it is, thankfully, not a capital offense to worship God.  But the world does continue to hold up false idols for us, and it also does continue to call us fools for refusing to bow down to them.  God continues to call us out of idolatry and into the true light of His love, but every time we place ourselves - our greed, our self-righteousness, our grudges and our desire for revenge - before God, we kill the Son God has sent to dwell in our hearts and we bow down before the false idol we have made of ourselves.

God, like a fool, will not give up on us.  We, like fools, must be willing to kill the idol of ourselves and follow God.  We have God's word that such foolishness will be rewarded.  We have the hope of Tobit to sustain us.  We have the witness of the Resurrection to empower us.  We have the example of Justin Martyr to guide us.  Let us, with St. Justin, proclaim our foolish yet certain hope of entering God's house when we live a life of love.