RUTH
YESTERDAY AND TODAY: BEST MODEL OF CHRISTIAN CONVERSION
Dear
Divya,
Ruth
in the Old Testament was a Moabite girl who did not know the true God of
Abraham, the true God of Isaac and the true God of Jacob until she became the
daughter-in-law of Naomi.
Naomi
and Elimelech, her husband, together with their two sons, Mahlon and Chilion,
were among the wave of migrant people from Israel who left their country
because of a severe famine and who came to Moab looking for a chance of
survival.
After
the death of her husband, the widow had to work very hard taking care of her
two young kids. Living in a foreign
land, Naomi had no choice but took two Moabite women, one named Orpah, the
other Ruth, to be the wives of Mahlon and Chilion respectively. The two men died shortly leaving a desperate
family with three childless widows.
Naomi
decided to go back to Israel her homeland where she would not escape from the
hardship of everyday life though but there she was assured of full freedom of
worshipping the Great Almighty God of her ancestors.
Naomi
told her two daughters-in-law of her plan and allowed them to return to their
own parents’ homes.
Orpah
kissed Naomi good-bye and left.
But
Ruth embraced her mother-in-law Naomi and said to her in tears:
“Do not ask me to abandon or forsake
you! For wherever you go I will go,
wherever you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God
my God” (see Ru 1:16).
The
rest of this so touching and inspiring a story was a happy ending. Ruth got married to Boaz a relative of the
Elimelech family and as a result she became the great-grand mother of King
David. So, in the genealogy of Jesus, as
reported by Saint Matthew, Chapter I, verses from 5 to 6, Ruth will be honored
for ever as one of the holy ancestors of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
Dear
Divya,
We
thank the loving and caring Father in heaven, the true God of our holy
ancestors, for receiving you on this very meaningful day into His Holy
genealogy because you have left everything to profess your faith in Jesus
Christ, his Only Begotten Son, true God and true man.
By
so doing, you have made a wise, right and grace-filled decision that brings you
one of the best blessings that you have ever dreamt of. Through the saving power of Jesus Christ’s
Suffering, Death and Resurrection in the Sacrament of Baptism, you have become
a member of the big family of God’s children, the Holy Catholic Church, founded
by Jesus Christ himself. You are now
called to be eye-witness to your own family, the same way Ruth did her own
family before, of the good news that there is now an ever larger extended
family of which you are the trusted contact person, between your blood family
and present Christian family.
Dear
Divya,
We
thank your good and generous parents for their wonderful family education background
that has encouraged you to say what did Ruth before: “Do not ask me to abandon or forsake you! For wherever you go I will go, wherever you
lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
We
are overwhelmed today by the great blessing of Christian conversion, this means
the encounter with Jesus Christ and the starting of the new life in Jesus
Christ until the day we will be totally transformed into his Life. Death and
Resurrection.
Let us join Bartimaeus, the blind man in this Mission Sunday Gospel, taken from Mark, Chapter 10, verses from 46 to 52, to ask Jesus for this favor: “Master, I want to see”.
Fr. Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Nhut, O.P.
