The Cause Is From The Lord

The Matins readings this past week were concerned with the death of King Solomon and the behavior of his successor, his son, Rehoboam.  The last years of Solomon had seen the reign of the old king descend into tyranny, and when he passed on, the people looked to his son and wondered if he would treat them any better.  They went to Rehoboam and asked him outright if they could trust the new king to be a good, wise and kind ruler, and promising him their allegiance and loving loyalty if he were good to his people.  Rehoboam consulted with the elders, the old men that had stood before Solomon while ye yet lived, asking them for their advice.  They spoke to Rehoboam, saying: “If thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and wilt serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be thy servants for ever.”  Sound advice, but apparently not to the liking of Solomon’s wicked son.  He ignored their counsel and consulted instead with the young men that he had grown up with.  Lacking the wisdom and prudence of their elders, they gave him the opposite advice.  Rehoboam addressed the nation with the following powerful and foreboding words: “My father made your yoke heavy, and I will add to your yoke: my father also chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.”  Naturally, he lost the loyalty of the people, which they transferred to Jeroboam, an outsider who desired to take over Solomon’s great kingdom.

I hope that as you were reading this lesson from history, it has occurred to you how similar is the situation we face in today’s United States.  Let’s start by substituting Biden for Solomon, a failing old man whose one-time moderate politics have been reduced to a regime of tyranny that threatens our Constitution and the freedoms it grants us.  As with Solomon, the time for his exit now seems to be upon us, and we can imagine the inner workings on that side of the aisle as the Democrats are faced with the choice of a successor.  Will it be someone who will treat the people well by guaranteeing our freedoms, stopping globalism in its tracks, reducing inflation, protecting us against foreign influence, restoring law and order to our cities, and stopping the stream of illegal evil-doers across our southern border?  Will the dark powers that be take the advice of the wise and prudent?  Or will they turn to the younger ‘woke’ generation and follow the counsel of the likes of AOC and her Squad, doubling down on their gender politics, their legalization of the murder of the unborn, forced vaccination, open borders, lawless riots, abolition of punishment for crimes, and their general Marxist call to a revolution in our land.

It seems as though history is about to repeat itself.  It seems highly unlikely that clearer heads will prevail, given our current inability to even identify any clear heads within that party.  If they wanted the will of God to be restored to the laws of the land, they would have left the Democratic Party long ago.  Rehoboam lost his kingdom to Jeroboam because of his refusal to listen to the grievances of his people. More to the point, he refused to be guided by the will of God, for, as Scripture tells us, “the cause was from the Lord.”  For “we the people” it is now up to us to transfer any allegiance we may have held in the past for the party of our Catholic forebears to the new Jeroboam, the outsider who seeks to reign in the place of the tyrannical Rehoboam, and “make America great again.”