Date: June 23, 2020 ()

Bible Text: |

Series:

The second of the ten commandments instruct us not to take the name of the Lord in vain. That’s why the Hebrews do not even have a name for God to avoid the possibility of desecration. They address Him as Adonai which means my Lord or Yahweh which means I am who am.

Jesus today is heard telling his disciples: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot, and turn and tear you to pieces.” It’s another way of saying, let us give due respect to holy things, holy people, or to the Holy God Himself. Jesus is giving us today a visual illustration of how we awfully desecrated the Holy with our foul speeches. It is like throwing your pearls before the swine.

The story in the first reading is one example of blasphemy. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, sent a message to Hezekiah, king of Israel: Do not let your God on whom you rely deceive you by saying that Jerusalem will not be handed over to the king of Assyria. You have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all other countries: they doomed them! Will you, then, be saved?’”

But King Hezekiah did not allow Sennacherib’s scornful thoughts to God to threaten him. He rather prayed and brought into his memory the greatness of Yahweh who is the God of Israel, enthroned upon the cherubim, God of all the nations, Maker of heaven and earth. And a God who listens.

Sennacherib was ignorant who is this God he taunted. His head bloated with pride to have cast the gods of the pagans into the fire; but Sennacherib must know, he can’t do it to the true and living of God of Israel. Sennacherib would learn his lesson. As God promised to Hezekiah: “That night the angel of the LORD went forth and struck down one hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. So, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, broke camp, and went back home to Nineveh.”

We try in all our power to come before the Lord as his worthy servants or pleasing children. I am amazed at how you in this country take seriously this second commandment in the daily practice of your faith. I have known many couples in the Philippines practicing cohabitation with no intention to receive the sacrament of matrimony complain to the priest why they could not receive communion? Let us not fall to the sin of desecration. The disciplines imposed by the church are meant to motivate us to take our faith seriously; that we may worship the Lord with the highest reverence.