Daily Reflection, July 9, 2026

Reflection

Hosea is often regarded as ‘the prophet of doom’ but beneath his message of destruction is a promise of restoration. Today’s passage from Hosea portrays beautifully the vulnerability but unshakeable nature of God’s love and mercy. Despite our turning away from God, God’s mercy comes as an overwhelming force of love. God speaks to us thus: ‘My heart within me is overwhelmed, fever grips my inmost being.’ Hosea’s personification of God’s response to Israel’s waywardness is visceral, almost anatomical, suggested by the Greek affiliated word esplagchnisthe (“moved with compassion” or “moved to pity”). The splagchna refers to the innards (eg. intestines). Hosea shows us a God who is ‘gripped with fever’ from the inside, as it were, for the love of us, and whose heart is ‘overwhelmed’ with mercy for us. God’s heart overflows with compassion and God chooses mercy over anger: ‘…I shall not come to you in anger.’

This is powerful language expressed of God’s gut-level compassion for us, perhaps, even beyond our ability to comprehend, given our limitations in expressing love and our knowledge of our own frailties. It seems God cannot help but pursue us with tenderness and persistence. We are given a look into God’s evangelical presence.

This opens the pathway into Matthew’s gospel where we meet Jesus who instructs his apostles to proclaim the Kingdon of Heaven. Jesus asks them to mirror his love by giving ‘without cost.’ This references Hosea’s portrayal of God. When we speak of evangelisation, we often think of foreign missionaries and preachers. I wonder: do we appreciate the evangelisation of compassion and mercy (like in Hosea’s God)? Sometimes, when we are moved to compassion for someone, this can speak more powerfully than the most eloquent of preachers. When we are moved to be merciful and compassionate toward the lonely, the aged, the suffering, and the marginalised, to the point of being ‘overwhelmed’ and ‘feverish’ from our innermost depths, we cannot help but act on this as the Good Samaritan did, and as Jesus did, for the crowds that flocked to him. Both experienced the felt response of esplagchnisthe. True evangelisation begins from our deepest depths where we are moved to compassion for the other.

We seek God only because God has found us first. We are already in God’s love. God is too busy loving us to be disappointed with our failings. Our many sins and failings may not be enough to get us into trouble with God. We only need to look to the Father of the Prodigal son who didn’t even wait for his son’s apology but, ‘from a long way off…felt compassion, and ran and embraced him, and kissed him’ (Lk 15: 11-32).

Kelvin Rodrigues is a parishioner at St. Paul of the Cross, Glen Osmond, SA.