Starting tomorrow this week’s first reading for daily Mass is taken from the Book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel was a priest who had been living in Jerusalem during the first Babylonian attack on the city (2 Kgs. 24:8-17, circa. 597 BC). The city itself was spared, but the king of Babylon took a first wave of Israelite prisoners into exile. Ezekiel was among them. The book begins five years after these traumatic events, and we find Ezekiel sitting on the bank of an irrigation canal near his Israelite refugee camp, on his 30th birthday no less. It’s the year that he would have been installed as a priest in Jerusalem. If you would like to explore “the big picture” of Ezekiel, you can find some great material on our parish Ezekiel webpage.

Over the next four days the readings are: Ezekiel 2:8-3:4, Ezekiel 9:1-7; 10:18-22, Ezekiel 12:1-12 and Ezekiel 16:1-15, 60, 63.

There is a strong narrative and theological progression in those selections. They can be read almost as a miniature version of Ezekiel’s whole prophetic message:

• God gives the prophet his word. 
• God judges a people who refuse that word. 
• God’s glory departs from the corrupted city. 
• Exile becomes unavoidable. 
• Yet God’s covenant survives Israel’s infidelity.

The readings are not merely four disconnected excerpts from a difficult prophet. Together they tell a story about what happens when God’s people cease listening and what God does when their failure seems to have destroyed everything. So stay tuned…

Image credit: A fresco from St. John the Baptist Church in Kratovo, Macedonia (photo: Rašo, via Wikimedia Commons)