3 August 2018
Friday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
“Shiloh” is a name associated with destruction. The civil war battle of Shiloh, with over 23,000 casualties, was, at the time, the bloodiest battle in American history. The author Ambrose Bierce, who had been present at the battle, wrote with characteristic sarcasm that “here in 1862 were some fields and a house or two; now there are a national cemetery and other improvements.” There are at least two ghost towns in the United States with the name of “Shiloh.” One is in Mississippi and the other is in Florida. In the Holy Land, too, there are ruins of a city of Shiloh, which flourished in the 11th century BC, and was famous as the place where the ark of the covenant was kept for centuries. As time passed, the ark of the covenant was taken away, and Shiloh was reduced to ruins.
The prophet Jeremiah, speaking in the 6th century BC, twice invoked the name of Shiloh in his prophecies against Jerusalem. “I will do to this house, which bears my name, in which you trust, and to the place which I gave you and your ancestors, exactly what I did to Shiloh” (Jer 7:14). “I will treat this house like Shiloh, and make this city a curse for all the nations of the earth” (Jer 26:6). Jeremiah’s point is that unless we obey God, nothing ultimately awaits us but destruction. Ancient ruins, modern ghost towns and civil war catastrophes afford images for our reflection on what it is, above all, that we must avoid: evil.