DAVID'S MAGNANIMITY

Homily for January 24^th, 2014: 1 Sam. 24:3-21.                                          

          King Saul had ample reason to be grateful to David. His harp playing soothed the old king’s anger and jealousy. David’s victory over Goliath, and over the Philistines on many other occasions, saved Israel from shame and defeat. But Saul’s relationship with David was a mixture of love and hatred. Over time, hatred gained the upper hand. Saul became increasingly jealous of the young man, and enraged that his son and heir, Jonathan, became David’s intimate friend. More than once Saul warned Jonathan that he would never inherit the throne, as long as David remained alive. 

          At the beginning of today’s first reading Saul has assembled a large army to hunt down and kill David. Aware of his father’s plans, Jonathan has been able, more than once, to warn David, and allow him to escape. Now David and his men have taken refuge in a cave. When Saul enters, he does not realize that they are there. “Here’s your chance,” David’s men signal to him when they see the old king entering. Unwilling to capture, let alone kill, the king, David stealthily cuts off part of Saul’s cloak. When his men make a move to fall upon the old man, David  restrains them.

Only after Saul has left the cave, does David emerge holding up part of Saul’s cloak and call out to him from a distance: “Is this not yours, O King!” Saul looks down and sees that, in fact, his garment has been torn. Deeply ashamed that the man he is trying to kill has had him in his power, yet never harmed him, Saul is so shaken that he responds, amid tears: “You are in the right rather than I; you have treated me generously, while I have done you harm. … Now I know that you shall surely be king.”

Tomorrow’s first reading, which we shall not hear, because it is displaced the account of St. Paul’s conversion from the Acts of the Apostles, recounts the death in battle of both Saul and his son Jonathan. David mourns for both, but especially for his beloved Jonathan. “I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother! Most dear have you been to me; more precious have I held love for you than love for women.”

The way is open for Israel’s greatest king to claim the throne. By his generosity to Saul he has shown himself a man of moral greatness; yet also, as we shall see, he remains a sinner like all of us.