30 Sep Monday

Complementing the Gospel, the prophet Habakkuk cries out to God in the midst of all the destruction around him. He prophesied around the year 612 BC, a period of turmoil in the Ancient Near East between the collapse of the northern kingdom of Israel and the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC. Hence his cry for God’s action in history. God gives him a vision of restoration and fulfillment of the land to the people. Habakkuk’s concerns are the great questions of how God acts in history and questions of justice. He rails against the rich who abuse the poor. In Habakkuk, wealth leads directly to the shedding of human blood. (d 2, 8. 17. Jesus comes in this same prophetic tradition in the gospel: “you cannot serve God and mammon.”