Wednesday, Memorial of Saint Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Isaiah 10:5–7, 13b–16
Assyria was powerful.
Its armies marched. Its kings boasted. Its enemies trembled.
Nation after nation fell before its sword.
But Isaiah sees more deeply.
Assyria is not the lord of history.
Assyria is only “the rod of God’s anger.”
It is an instrument.
A dangerous instrument. A violent instrument. An arrogant instrument.
But still only an instrument.
This is not an easy truth.
Why would God use Assyria to correct His people?
Why would God allow a nation more violent, more proud, and more cruel to become the rod of His judgment?
The prophet Habakkuk would later ask the same question.
It is one of the hardest questions in the Bible.
Isaiah does not explain everything.
But he makes one thing clear:
Assyria does not rule the world.
God does.
The king of Assyria says:
“By my own power I have done it. By my own wisdom, for I am clever.”
This is the voice of empire.
I conquered. I built. I decided. I moved borders. I took treasures. I made nations bow.
But the Lord answers with a question:
Can the axe boast against the one who cuts with it?
Can the saw exalt itself above the one who uses it?
The empire thinks it is master.
But before God, it is only an axe in His hand.
This is the blindness of power.
Power forgets its limits.
Success becomes pride. Victory becomes idolatry. Strength becomes a god.
The empire begins to believe its own propaganda.
It imagines itself eternal.
But every empire is grass.
It rises in the morning. It withers by evening.
Assyria passed. Babylon passed. Rome passed.
Every power that calls itself absolute will one day discover that it is dust.
Saint Augustine understood this as Rome was falling.
Human kingdoms are fragile because human hearts are wounded by sin.
No earthly city is eternal.
No empire can save the world.
Only God is Lord.
The Catechism reminds us of God’s “primacy and absolute Lordship over history and the world.”
The Book of Revelation gives this Lord a name:
Jesus Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords.
He does not reign like the empires.
He does not conquer by cruelty. He does not rule by fear. He does not save by oppression.
He liberates. He heals. He raises the dead.
This is the kingdom Jesus proclaimed.
And this kingdom remains when all empires fade.
So Isaiah teaches us not to be hypnotized by power.
Do not worship the sword. Do not fear the empire. Do not believe every boast that comes from the throne.
The axe is not God.
The empire is not God.
History does not belong to the proud.
History belongs to the Lord.
Biblical Reflections on the Gospel of Matthew
Scripture Attribution
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993
the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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