Awake O Sleeper

In chapter one of the book of Hosea, we read of a strange and difficult to understand request. The prophet is directed by God to marry a prostitute. As we read further, we recognize that by living this experience Hosea will intimately know God’s heartache over the unfaithful Israel. And it is from the depths of his conscious, painful experience that the capacity to communicate God’s message will be formed. As preparation for us to internalize the message, he shares the following glimpse into the mind of the unfaithful spouse, “For she said, “I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink”[1].

Similarly, Jesus, knowing the Jewish scriptures intimately, tells a seemingly parallel story in the Gospel of Luke about a father with two sons, “and the younger of them said to his father, ‘father give me the share of property that falls to me’…the younger son gathered all he had and took his journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in loose living.”[2]

For both the wife and the son however, things do not turn out the way they envisioned. We hear of Hosea’s wife, “She shall pursue her lovers, but not overtake them; and she shall seek them but shall not find them. Then she shall say, “I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better with me then than now.”[3] Likewise, we hear of the younger son, “And when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country, and he began to be in want….’how many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare…I will arise and go to my father’” [4]

The prodigal son, the unfaithful spouse, both, while in the comfort of family life, create in their own minds a new projected reality that they will bring into being for themselves. Both concocted realities involve leaving behind the ones who love them and trading the real for a dream of something more. Yet neither of their self-created visions comes to fruition. It seems that the story of original sin, where Adam and Eve grasped for something more, is being told again and again. But is there more to these stories of a wife and son than just warning us to be on guard against sinful desires?

An additional consideration lies in seeing these stories through the lens of the most fundamental and personal reality of all, that we exist. You and I “are” and we “have being”. This may seem so elementary, yet it still requires focused and active consideration on our part to grasp it, otherwise we will miss the point.  You and I are here, we did not cause ourselves to be, nor did we even give our “consent” to being. Yet here we are. But it’s more than that, to “be” we need more than just ourselves, we rely on the rest of existence “to be” also. We need what is outside of us to have somewhere and something to exist with and in.

Here is where our connection to the prodigal son and unfaithful spouse begins. In the Summa Theologiae, St Thomas Aquinas helps us to see that God’s nature (essence) and his existence are one and the same, meaning that God’s very nature is to exist and that He is existence itself [5](I.Q3.A4). This idea should recall for us how God identified Himself as “I am” to Moses from the burning bush. It should also indicate to us that “existence” is now personal. At this point to avoid any confusion we must clearly state that this concept of God as existence is not some “eco-religious” idea that makes nature (trees, animals etc.) into God. Existence and being as we are considering it here transcend the natural world.

As previously stated, we did not cause ourselves to be, meaning that something else did. So, by the fact that we exist not by our own effort means in an analogous way that we are “indebted to” existence (God) in the way a child is to a parent. And similarly, because my life’s fruitfulness is so intertwined with and dependent upon all of existence (God) that is “other than me”, means that in a way I am” wedded” to it as a spouse.

As a son and a spouse to existence there is nowhere I can go to and escape from what I am and what is. Do I recognize the indescribable and mysterious fact that I exist and that I cannot run from or escape it? Or am I like Hosea’s wife and the prodigal son who either cannot or refuse to see past their desire for loose living, bread, water, flax, oil and for creating their own new reality? It is when our eyes are blinded to reality as it is (as God has fashioned it), when we choose to ignore it and choose our own visions of what will be that we are the unfaithful and the prodigal, we pridefully ignore the elementary truth of being and run away as if we can actually go somewhere else.

Although we may run from or after things, we cannot run from or escape God. This is the truth; this is what it means to be “awake” (not woke) to reality. It is the humbling recognition that I am not the cause of, nor the designer of real existence. I can certainly act on reality, such as cutting off my thumb, yet the “cutting off” does not uncreate or change who and what I am. It only makes me currently “thumbless”.  These realities exist without my consent. Period. Much of the pain, sorrow, and bitterness in our lives and in the world stems from the fact that we try to (and believe we can) either make something “not” or grasp something more and control reality rather than cultivating it and working for its flowering as God has designed it.

So, what is that I should do? The final chapter of Hosea reveals this option, “Return…to the LORD, your God....Take with you words, and return to the LORD; Say to him, ‘Forgive all iniquity, and take what is good”. To this repentant return, God responds, “I will heal their apostasy, I will love them freely; for my anger is turned away from them. I will be like the dew for Israel: he will blossom like the lily; He will strike root like the Lebanon cedar, and his shoots will go forth. His splendor will be like the olive tree and his fragrance like Lebanon cedar. Again, they will live in his shade; they will raise grain, They will blossom like the vine, and his renown will be like the wine of Lebanon.”[6]

And building upon Hosea’s final chapter, Jesus story of the prodigal son gives us an even more intimate vision of what happens when we turn back, “But while he was at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him…bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him: and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”[7]

God is calling us to turn back to Him, to accept His authority in all of existence and especially in our individual lives. He is a personal and loving God who yearns for His spouse and His children to return. It is only at home, with Him, that we will find the fulfillment and happiness we so desperately long for.

[1] Holy Bible RSVCE, Hosea
[2] Ibid
[3] Holy Bible RSVCE, Luke
[4] Ibid
[5] St Thomas Aquinas, “Summa Theologiae, I.Q3.A4”, newadvent.org
[6] Holy Bible RSVCE, Hosea
[7] Holy Bible RSVCE, Luke