“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Is. 1:18).
One of the accusations against men and women of faith is we have given over the use of reason. “Science,” the doubters say, “disproves the existence of God, and I don’t need a bearded man in the sky to tell me how to be good.” Well, that’s as may be, but I still haven’t seen a science experiment that disproves the existence of God. I have seen, though, faithful Catholic Christians in deep, personal communion with the one, true God, and find in Him a loving,
reasonable Father. For thinking people who do not necessarily have an easy familiarity with God, there can often be a worry belief in God, in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Incarnation, in the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord — in short, in the whole of what really counts in Christian Faith — is somehow unreasonable. A crutch for ignorant people. Worse: an excuse for weak-minded people. But that is not the God presented to us in today’s Lesson from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. The sacred text presents a God Who addresses His servant almost as an equal: “Come, let us reason together,” says the LORD. What condescension by our God! The One Who is Logos — that is, Reason and Logic and Wisdom Itself — asks a lowly, Bronze Age man living in ancient Palestine to reason with Him.
We should not be surprised to find the God of the Bible, the True God, Who took flesh and dwelt among us, is One Who is willing to condescend. In truth, this is the entire Story of Salvation. Mankind, despite having all of Creation to enjoy and steward, chose the single tree which was forbidden. Even that tree’s being placed within Eden — to give Adam and Eve a true choice to love God or not — was an act of condescension by God: He could have given us no choice at all. But He did. And when, using the gift of free will which He gave us, mankind chose to rebel, to disobey, to fail in loving the One Who created us, our God made a way. Gave us hope. Shared His Plan. For us then, who are in the midst of our long Lenten march to Easter, we must look with faith, and above all, with hope, toward the God Whose desire for intimacy with His Creation, given freely, led Him to abandon the perfection and unapproachable light of heaven for a Manger in Bethlehem — and a Cross outside Jerusalem. When was the last time you sat down to reason with God? Or, as another translation puts it, to “talk [things] over” with God? Devotions are important — please pray the Rosary, the Stations of the Cross, the litanies, for they are humble, little paths to drawing nearer to our Lord. But equally important is what St. John Henry Newman described as “cor ad cor loquitur” — heart
speaks to heart.
“Come now, let us reason together,” let us talk this over, “says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”