Today’s First Reading begs the question of what the big deal is if King David wants to do a census of his people. A leader\u00a0would normally be within his rights to do so. However, almost immediately after the census, David realizes he has sinned and asks the Lord for forgiveness. Scholars debate here\u00a0what the sin here was, but perhaps pride and vanity were involved, which is why David realized almost as soon as it was done that he’d acted wrongly. His commander Joab had tried to\u00a0dissuade him, but David insisted; maybe Joab and his commanders knew that the people would take such a gesture badly, and\u00a0ancient peoples also believed at the time that\u00a0actions like a census made the king have a mysterious power over them and was an expression of ownership. It’s also true that a census is usually taken for taxation, allocation of resources, or to measure military strength with war in mind. It could also have been simply a way for\u00a0David to flex what he thought was his absolute authority.<\/p>\n
As David realizes and the Lord reminds him, his authority comes from the Lord and is at\u00a0the service of the people. Authority bears responsibility, and when authority sins, it has an effect on the people who answer to that authority. Three possible punishments are offered, and each reflects a punishment related to a goal of the census:\u00a0they would all impact the population and make the census useless, because people would die. In choosing David still tries to remain directly unaffected by what happens next: he chooses the shortest punishment, one that apparently would affect him the least, and once again realizes how horrible a decision he made when self-preservation was involved. By the time he\u00a0asks the Lord to bring punishment upon himself \u00a0instead, the deed is already done and seventy thousand have died.<\/p>\n
All our actions have consequences, and at times our pride can blind us to the long term ones. Let’s ask Our Lord to help us not abuse, out of vanity or pride, whatever gifts or duties\u00a0he has entrusted to us.<\/p>\n
Readings:\u00a02 Samuel 24:2, 9\u201317;\u00a0Psalm 32:1\u20132, 5\u20137;\u00a0Mark 6:1\u20136.<\/em>\u00a0See also\u00a014th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B<\/a>,\u00a017th Week in Ordinary Time, Friday<\/a>,\u00a022nd Week in Ordinary Time, Monday<\/a>, Thursday after Epiphany<\/a>, and 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s First Reading begs the question of what the big deal is if King David wants to do a census of his people. A leader\u00a0would normally be within his rights to do so. However, almost immediately after the census, David realizes he has sinned and asks the Lord for forgiveness. Scholars debate here\u00a0what the sin … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[34,45,12,146],"class_list":["post-1066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fourth-week","tag-ordinary-time","tag-wednesday","tag-year-ii"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65qtw-hc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1066"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1067,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066\/revisions\/1067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}