The Life And Death Struggles Series

Homily for Monday in 3rd Week of Advent

Balaam was a prophet for hire. He was a wealthy and respected prophet of Yahweh, but he was not an Israelite. Balak, a king who was in the way of Israel as they moved toward the Promised Land, was nervous about all these people moving across his territory. So he hired a prophet of their own God to come and curse them. Well, it was a good idea on paper.

The problem was that God didn’t want Israel to be cursed. So when Balaam set out on his journey, he himself heard the voice of a truly minor prophet, a prophet that said “he-haw.” Three times his donkey saw an angel in the path, ready to kill Balaam. Three times the donkey balked and ran off the road and got a beating, with Balaam calling him a stupid jackass. The third time it happened the donkey turned on Balaam and asked “don’t you see? Am I in the habit of not doing what you tell me?” And Balaam’s eyes were opened, he saw the angel in the path, and realized that he was the one who had been blind and stupid. Despite it being against his own interests, Balaam pronounced a blessing on Israel, not a curse, and prophesied the star from Jacob, who we know was Jesus, and whose birth was announced to another group of Gentile prophets called the Wise Men or Magi–once more by a star.

Balaam eventually returned to his old, meretricious ways, and hired himself out as advisor to all the anti-Israel coalition. His most effective ploy was to use sexual immorality to lure Israelites into idol-worship. In the end, however, justice and truth triumphed, and Balaam received his final consulting fee with a sword-thrust. When he prophesied the truth, he had to be dragged by a jackass to do so, but he did not repent of his sins, and so suffered the ultimate punishment.

Jesus and the Sadducees shown us in today’s Gospel were locked in deadly combat throughout the earthly ministry of Our Lord. They kept trying to get Him to say or do things that would disrupt His appeal to the people, and He always outwitted them. Like Balaam, they never repented, and in the end it appeared that they were victorious, as Jesus breathed His last on a Roman torture instrument. But three days later Jesus put everyone in his place by rising from the dead. He conquered death and opened the pathway to the true promised land, the kingdom of God in God’s very presence.

Today we are in a struggle like that between Moses and Balak, a battle to the death between God’s people and a pagan secular culture, a culture of death that even wants to remove the word “Christmas” from our vocabulary, while retaining the Christmas sales profits. It is important for us to remember that Christ has already won the victory, and that the Church will triumph after this and every other persecution. We see little signs of cracks in the enemy’s defenses. A few years ago, a famous English atheist reluctantly concluded that there must be some kind of divine intelligence behind the design of the universe. He was quick to dismiss the God of Abraham and St. Peter, whom he does not know, but the damage was done. Even the heathens witness to Christ. Take comfort, but do not put down the weapons of faith. There is much to be done yet.