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Monday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
Ezekiel 24:15–23
In today’s reading, one phrase is repeated twice:
“the delight of your eyes.”
First, it refers to Ezekiel’s wife.
This tells us how much the prophet loved her.
Then, the same phrase is used for Jerusalem and its temple.
They were the delight of the people’s eyes.
Their pride.
Their security.
Their joy.
And both would be taken away.
This is one of the hardest passages in the Book of Ezekiel.
The prophet is told that his wife will die.
And he is told not to mourn publicly.
His personal sorrow becomes a sign for the exiles in Babylon.
Soon, they too will hear that Jerusalem has fallen,
that the temple has been destroyed,
that the delight of their eyes has been taken away.
They may mourn privately.
But the Lord tells them to mourn more deeply over the sins that brought this tragedy.
Prophets often spoke not only with words, but with actions.
Hosea’s marriage became a sign of God’s faithful love and Israel’s unfaithfulness.
Isaiah walked barefoot as a sign of humiliation and exile.
Jeremiah buried a linen belt and wore a yoke to show what would happen to Jerusalem.
Jesus Himself performed symbolic actions.
The most striking was His action in the temple and the cursing of the fig tree.
Like the prophets before Him, Jesus warned that worship without fruit could not stand.
Symbolic actions are powerful because they cannot be ignored.
They enter the eyes before they enter the ears.
They disturb.
They remain in memory.
They force people to ask:
What does this mean?
In 1966, when Poland celebrated one thousand years since its baptism, the communist government tried to stop the pilgrimage of the icon of the Black Madonna.
The image was arrested.
So the bishops sent empty frames instead,
decorated with flowers,
a candle,
and the Book of the Gospel.
The empty frame said more than many speeches.
A more recent example is Greta Thunberg sitting outside the Swedish Parliament instead of going to school.
A silent action became a question to the whole world:
What kind of future are we leaving to the young?
Ezekiel’s action was far more painful.
It touched his own heart.
He lost the delight of his eyes.
And through that loss, Israel was asked to understand what it had done to itself.
This is the severe mercy of the prophets.
They do not speak to entertain us.
They wake us up.
They show us what we do not want to see.
They teach us that sin destroys what we love most.
A family.
A city.
A temple.
A people.
A future.
So today, let us ask for eyes that can read the signs God gives.
Let us ask for hearts that can mourn rightly.
Not only over what we lose,
but over the sins that make us lose the delight of our eyes.
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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