Return To ME With Your Whole Heart

"YAHWEH says, 'Yet even now, return to ME with your whole heart; with fasting, weeping and mourning.  Rend your heart, not your garment.  Return to YAHWEH, your GOD--gracious and compassionate.'

YAHWEH is slow to anger, full of kindness, and HE repents of having punished.

Who knows?  Probably HE will relent once more, and spare some part of the harvest, from which we may bring sacred offerings to YAHWEH, your GOD.

Blow the trumpet in Zion, proclaim a sacred fast, call a solemn assembly.

Gather the people, sanctify the community, bring together the elders, even the children and infants at the breast.  Let the bridegroom leave his bed, and the bride her room.

Between the vestibule and the altar, let the priests, YAHWEH's ministers, weep and say: Spare your people, YAHWEH.  Do not humble them or make them an object of scorn among the nations.  Why should it be said among the people: Where is their GOD?

YAHWEH has become jealous for HIS land; HE has had pity on HIS people." - Joel 2:12-18 

(Return to ME with your whole heart: an invitation to penance.  In times of hardship, public fasts were proclaimed in Israel.  People would wear mourning clothes. or they would replace their clothes with sackcloth, or they would not comb their hair and cover their faces with ashes.  In the Gospel, JESUS will not say that these signs of physical penance, like fasting to express sorrow and to accompany prayer, are useless [see Matthew 4:1 and Mark 2:20], but will make it clear that these external signs of penance are not everything, nor are they what is most important.)

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