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Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent
Hezekiah 
 

In the third year of King Hoshea son of Elah of Israel, Hezekiah son of King Ahaz of Judah began to reign. He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign; he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abi daughter of Zechariah. He did what was right in the sight of the Lord just as his ancestor David had done.  He removed the high places, broke down the pillars, and cut down the sacred pole.  He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it; it was called Nehushtan.  

He trusted in the Lord the God of Israel; so that there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah after him, or among those who were before him. For he held fast to the Lord; he did not depart from following him but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses. The Lord was with him; wherever he went, he prospered. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him.  He attacked the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory, from watchtower to fortified city.

Hezekiah brought sweeping reforms to the religious practices of the people.  He enacted a strict mandate to worship God along and he prohibited the veneration of other gods that were in the Temple of Jerusalem.  He reformed the priesthood and restored right worship.  It says that he also destroyed the bronze serpent that Moses had made.  It is believed that it had become the object of idolatrous worship in that people of Israel started to make offerings to the bronze serpent instead of God himself.  It is so easy to turn things and objects into gods and worship them instead of the one true God.  As Catholics we have a lot of “stuff” to help us grow closer to God, to enter sacred space and to elevate us to God.  The shadow side is that these can easily become more important than God, the one to whom these things are directed.  The is nothing new in that Hezekiah 700 years before Christ was dealing with the very same thing.  Because the human being is made for God, in the search for God, he or she can fill it with all kinds of things other than God.  It can be easy for Catholics to focus on the wrong message and for others who think of Catholic to think the wrong things about our faith in God.  A faculty teacher at seminary would often remind the men that the finger that points to the moon is not the moon.  He would say that to remind the men that we are not to idolize the things of God but only God.  Another faculty member would advise the seminarians that they get to a parish, the need to find the gods of the people and “burn incense before them” before you start forming them. As a new pastor, you can get into deep trouble without realizing it by tampering with the not so important things of the faith that are very important.  Jesus coming at Christmas was time to bring right worship to the people.  He established a new and eternal covenant and taught us to find the freedom offered in God.  However, still there can be the tendency to miss the mark.  Hear God constantly calling us back to right worship and a continual purification of our faith in him.

King Hezekiah was a leader who tried to clean up the things that were wrong in his kingdom.  It is important to live in a good relationship with God and to pray and serve God in a way that he wants us to worship him.  Too often we can get sidetracked and start to worshiping other things instead of God.  It can be easy to love things more than God.  King Hezekiah ruled his kingdom by bring all the people back to the way God wants us to live.  Jesus came at Christmas to show us the right way to live and to love his Father in heaven the way we should.  Do you love things more than God?

Discuss as a family what it means to be a creation made for God and therefore a religious being.  Talk about the many things of creation that are easily turned into gods in our culture, church and souls.  Name some of the gods we have today that can easily be more important than God in practice.  What are the steps to constantly purify our faith in order to have a better and more authentic relationship with God?  Explore how the coming of Christ draws us closer to right worship of the Trinity.