People of the Book: Hosea
Inscribed above the rotunda in Gasson Hall at Boston College is a rather sobering latin phrase which has long resonated with me — Quid Hoc ad Aeternitatem, “What is this in light of eternity?” Such an incisive and penetrating question cuts to the core of what it means to be Christian, through our daily attempts to live out our vocation as baptized disciples of the Holy One of God and our repeated failures to do so well according to any sort of objective standard.
The Lenten season provides ample opportunity for reflecting upon such a question, and for examining those areas of selfishness and infidelity to God which characterize so much of what it means to be limited, imperfect, and bound in time, and to compare them to our ultimate and undeniable end in eternity, either for good or for ill. (Nineteenth century theologian Tryon Edwards once wittily defined hell as “truth realized too late”).
In her wisdom, the church sets aside this rather lengthy season each year to carefully take stock of our moral lives, and if necessary (it always is) to re-align the compasses of our embodied souls with the fixed points of Love, Forgiveness, and Mercy that are ever present in the welcoming arms of the divine. Often the teachings of the major and minor prophets can provide a foothold for ascending this steep and rocky terrain of the spiritual mountain toward ever-increasing intimacy with God.
The life of the prophet Hosea is one such witness, his own personal narrative presenting an allegorical interpretation or typology of this constant call to repentance and appreciation of undying providential love. Hosea, writing in the period of Israel’s expansion of power and yet moral decline into decadence under Jeroboam II, is instructed by God to marry the promiscuous Gomer. He does so, and despite giving him a number of children (with pointed if unsubtle names such as Loruhama “not pitied” and Loammi “not my people”), Gomer continues to be unfaithful to Hosea and to prostitute herself to other men. The adulterous woman symbolizes both Israel’s collective idolatrous practices, lecherously throwing themselves before false gods, and the lasciviousness and spiritual harlotry of every individual’s propensity to cast wayward glances at realities other than the Lord, such as money, fame, power and self-contentedness. Despite the steadfast love of the Hosaic figure (God), Gomer (Israel and us) continues to pawn herself off to lesser men, and in the process to sell herself short of the destiny to which she is called. However, he never divorces himself from her. The boundless mercy of Hosea will eventually purge, not destroy the faithless wife.
The nuptial imagery of God wedding himself to his people on Sinai is carried over into the New Testament period for Christians. The parallel between Hosea and Gomer comes to reflect the enduring love that Christ has for his Bride, the church, a love that is so demanding it can endure neither spot nor wrinkle in her (Eph 5:27).
C.S. Lewis reflects on this reality in The Problem of Pain:
“For the truth which this analogy serves to emphasize is that Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved: that the mere ‘kindness’ which tolerates anything except suffering in its object is, in that respect, at the opposite pole from Love. When we fall in love with a woman, do we cease to care whether she is clean or dirty, fair or foul? Do we not rather then first begin to care?… When Christianity says that God loves man, it means God loves man: not that he has some ‘disinterested,’ because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of his love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the ‘lord of terrible aspect,’ is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, not the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’s love for his work and despotic as a man’s love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as a love between the sexes. How this should be I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we, should have value so prodigious in their Creator’s eyes. It is certainly a burden of glory not only beyond our deserts but also, except in rare moments of grace, beyond our desiring.”
Hosea embodies this reality and models for us the Lenten and perennial call to challenge ourselves to live up to our destiny as sons and daughters of God. As the prostitute Aldonza tells the love-struck Don Quixote, “Of all the cruel bastards who’ve badgered and battered me, you are the cruelest of all. Can’t you see what your gentle Insanities do to me? Rob me of anger and give me despair. Blows and abuse I can take and give back again, tenderness I cannot bear.”
His response echoes God’s constant words to his people shown to us through the Scriptures and the prophets: “Now and forever, thou art my lady.”
Michael M. Canaris of Collingswood is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.
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