Thus ends the book of the Prophet Hosea in today’s first reading. It is a beautiful and uplifting promise to Israel that follows all the chapters preceding it with their almost unrelenting and rather stern condemnations of Israel for turning to the idols of Baal. But here the Prophet has dispelled all the gloom of before with a great promise from God, “I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely.” All the people need do is “return.” In other words, repentance heals all things. Then, “They shall blossom like the vine; their fame shall be like the wine of Lebanon.”
The words “Return to me,” run throughout the prophets. We think of Joel 2:12-13“Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” If we but turn back to the Lord and “satisfy the desire of the afflicted,” then, as Isaiah 58:14 famously says, “I will make you to ride on the heights of the earth!”
To repent is to make a decision to allow God to lead us and only God which is to be led by love alone (“The Lord is my shepherd”). If we make that decision and become willing to do what we must to seek it continually, which is primarily prayer, practice and service, then all those promises of Isaiah 58, Hosea 14 as well as Psalm 23 begin to come true and we begin to find that, “Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life!” As Isaiah 1:18 put it, “Though your sins be like scarlet, they shall become white as snow.”
The promise of Hosea heard today may have had its place in Jewish history, but its promise continues to be offered to the whole world because it is a spiritual promise made to everyone from the God of all and all eternity. It is simple in its core, be guided more and more only by the love of God and then, in the beautiful words of Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well!”