Tuesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Amos 3:1–8; 4:11–12
“The Lord does nothing without revealing His purpose to His servants the prophets.”
This is one of the great lines from the prophet Amos.
Before God acts, God reveals.
Before judgment comes, a word is spoken.
Before the fire falls, someone is sent.
When Sodom and Gomorrah were near destruction, God revealed His purpose to Abraham.
And Abraham reasoned with God.
“Will you really sweep away the righteous with the wicked?”
He stood before the Lord and pleaded for the innocent.
Now, in the time of Amos, God reveals His purpose again.
But this time, the prophet does not reason with God.
He reasons with the people.
He speaks to Israel while there is still time.
He warns them because he cares.
That is what prophets do.
They do not speak because they enjoy condemning.
They speak because they can see danger.
They speak because they hear what others refuse to hear.
They speak because they care enough to tell the truth.
Amos was not a palace prophet. He was not a professional flatterer. He was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs.
But the Lord had spoken.
And Amos could not remain silent.
“The lion has roared; who will not fear?
The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?”
The tragedy is that Sodom did not listen.
Israel did not listen.
The warning came, but the heart remained closed.
The sins of Sodom were not only sexual disorder. The prophet Ezechiel names them clearly:
pride, abundance of food, comfortable ease, and refusal to help the poor and needy.
Ancient Israel fell into the same sickness.
A religious people with an unjust heart.
A chosen people who forgot the poor.
A people blessed by God who became deaf to God.
And are we so different?
The same sins still walk through our cities.
Immorality. Arrogance. Materialism. Indifference to the poor.
We build higher. We consume more. We explain everything. We excuse everything.
And still God sends voices.
Pope Francis warned us that an economy of exclusion and inequality kills.
Pope Leo XIV warns us that artificial intelligence must never be allowed to reduce the human person, created in the image and likeness of God, to a tool, a number, or a machine.
These are not merely opinions.
They are prophetic warnings.
God reveals through those who help us see what we would rather not see.
But the question is always the same:
Will we listen while there is still time?
Amos says:
“Prepare to meet your God, O Israel.”
This is not only a threat.
It is a final mercy.
It means the door is not yet closed.
The people can still return. The city can still change. The future can still be different.
But only if the warning is heard.
Only if the heart is opened.
Only if the truth is allowed to become conversion.
The Lord does nothing without revealing His purpose.
The greater tragedy is this:
God reveals.
The prophets speak.
But we go on as if nothing has been said.
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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