‹ Back

Daniel 13:1-2. "There was a man living in Babylon whose name was Joakim. And he took a wife named Susanna, the daughter of Hilkiah, a very beautiful woman." We all know the rest of this story - two Jewish elders who were judges frequented Joakim's house. They each came to lust after Susanna and conspired to seduce her in her garden. When she refused their advances, they lied about her chastity, and she was sentenced to death. God prompted Daniel to come to her defense, however, and by separating the judges and questioning them, their duplicity was revealed, and they were put to death instead of the innocent Susanna. (Daniel 13).

 

These opening verses of this chapter of Daniel give a few hints about what is to come. Joakim lives in Babylon, where the Jewish people are in exile, and his wife Susanna is a beautiful, faithful woman. Babylon, while then a real place, is also a symbol throughout the Bible of the kingdom of evil. "Babylon the great, mother of harlots and of earth's abominations." (Revelation 17:5). It is the epitome of corruption, the harlot that finally falls to her end in Revelation ("Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!" (Revelation 18:2)), to the great joy of heaven ("Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and just; he has judged the great harlot who corrupted earth with her fornication." (Revelation 19:1-2)

 

So this beautiful, holy woman, Susanna, was living in the belly of the beast, as it were, as were all the Jews in exile. The judges who treated her so poorly were also supposed to be holy, but they had allowed their lust to get the better of them, lust that we can assume was, in general, given free rein in Babylon. They were not good men, but it can also be said that the corruption of the place they were, Babylon, seeped into their souls and gave them a push towards evil that they may not have succumbed to if they were living in a well ordered Israel of proper worship.

 

The place where we are living affects us all tremendously. We have to be aware of this influence and resist it if we find ourselves in an immoral place. Susanna was maintaining her holiness in a corrupt nation, but it was not easy, she almost lost her life to evil. Our whole world is under the influence of the devil, and we can see people, institutions, and nations falling to his corruption all around us. For some reason, God is permitting evil to have quite the day right now. While we are in this Babylon of a world, we must be on guard for the evil in which we are steeping and not let ourselves be corrupted by it. Even if we are not as beautiful as Susanna on the outside, our souls are meant to be just as beautiful. We don't want them to be stained by the immorality of our nation or this world, even if everyone else seems to be corrupted by it.

 

Also, I want to say something about sexual sin. It has been said lately, even by the Pope, that sins of a sexual nature are somehow not as serious as other sins. I can see where this argument comes from - the whole "love is love" argument, and the idea that sex is an expression of love, as opposed to, say, murder, which is a violent expression of hatred. But I very much disagree with this take on sexual sin. I think sins against chastity are the most insidious of all, precisely because the devil can convince us that they are expressions of love, and that they hurt no one, while they actually lead us to the worst of sins, including pride (we have a whole month dedicated to it now!), and murder (which we condone as being "women's healthcare").

 

Sexual sin is, in fact, the very opposite of love, and can be much more insidiously damaging than sins of hatred. The argument that it hurts no one is an absolute lie. Look at what we are doing to our children with our slavish devotion to sex: aborting them, neglecting them, selling them and their body parts, using them as sexual objects, treating them as adornments to our perfectly planned lives. Look at what we've done to the sacrament of marriage, it doesn't seem to mean anything as a sacrament to many people anymore, even Catholics. Look at what we have done to the family, and therefore to society, it is collapsing all around us in very large part due to our idolization of sex. St Paul VI was absolutely right in Humanae Vitae about the consequences of contraception, we can see it all around us. Jesus, in the Precious Blood Mystical Prayers, says "My adversary used this sin [of fornication and adultery] to claim all men to himself." (Prayer Against Sins of the Flesh, July 28th 1998). 

 

Sex is the giving and receiving of love in an image of God's giving and receiving of love. It is the way humanity participates in God's creative love. "The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator." (Humanae Vitae, opening line). Marital sex, open to life, approaches the ecstasy of God in his continual creation. It is, of course, the thing the devil would most want to corrupt, and the thing that most directly allows him to destroy God's creatures, both the ones who are sinning against chastity and the innocent ones they are creating when they do.

 

We are in the belly of the beast, we must be aware of the corruption that is seeping in to us because of where we are, and remember that God's laws are meant to protect us from that corruption. Obedience to Him in all things, even those the world might try to convince us are of "lesser" importance, will keep us holy like Susanna. Disobedience will lead us down the path of the evil judges, and further into the belly of the beast.