Bible Study Reflection #29: Broken-Hearted Prophet

More often than not, these strange reflections of mine focus on the Gospel, and I suppose that’s good since the Gospel is the Good News of Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of God’s revelation to humanity. We should, therefore, never neglect the Gospel and the other New Testament books that offer valuable and prophetic insights into the teachings and life of Jesus revealed in the Gospel. But we must also remember that the entire Old Testament foreshadows the New Testament and provides many equally valuable insights into God’s plan, thus helping us better understand and appreciate all that He has revealed. This understanding of and appreciation for the entirety of God’s revelation will only deepen our faith and lead us along the path to the salvation He desires for us.

Today, then, I’ve decided to focus on the prophet Jeremiah and, specifically, the opening verses of the book of his prophecy. As we begin this reflection, I ask you to open your Bible to Jeremiah and read the opening verses from chapter one: Jeremiah 1:1-19.

A little background...To our knowledge Jeremiah was still a young man, probably only in his twenties, when God called him in the year 626 B.C. He was preceded by several earlier prophets – Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah – by a hundred years or so.

Only a few years after Jeremiah’s call, King Josiah (640-609 B.C.) began a major religious reform after a restoration of the Temple led to the re-discovery of the Law, especially the Book of Deuteronomy. During Josiah’s reign, the Assyrians, who had conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, began to decline and were ultimately defeated by the Babylonians (Chaldeans). King Josiah, in an attempt to reclaim lands that were once part of David’s kingdom, claimed Samaria and a number of other cities, but died in a battle with the Egyptians at Megiddo in 609 B.C. (You can read a tribute to Josiah in Sirach 49:1-4.) Two decades later, in July of 587 B.C., Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. The city’s destruction was followed by the exile or Babylonian Captivity. Although the exile officially ended with the decree of Persian King Cyrus in 537 B.C., the Jews considered it a 70-year captivity from 586 B.C. when the Temple was destroyed until the Temple was rebuilt in 516 B.C.

The years of Jeremiah’s prophecy, then, were a time of dramatic change and upheaval. They were a time of religious reform, a time of tension and threatening storms, and a time of horrendous defeat. It was a difficult time to be a prophet of the Lord.

Many have called Jeremiah God’s broken-hearted prophet, and I can certainly join them in that. He was a man who lived what can only be described as heart-rending life and whose prophecies of dire warning went largely unheeded by the people of Judah. But God had prepared him for all that he would face:

They will fight against you, but not prevail over you, for I am with you to deliver you – oracle of the Lord [Jer 1:19].

When you speak all these words to them, they will not listen to you either. When you call to them, they will not answer you [Jer 7:27].

And, of course, God was correct. Very few, and especially none of those in power, listened to Jeremiah. Like so many of us, the people of Judah really didn’t want to hear bad news, and unfortunately for Jeremiah, most of what God revealed to him wasn’t very pleasant. But the people and their rulers had only themselves to blame. What did God tell Jeremiah in our passage?

I will pronounce my sentence against them for all their wickedness in forsaking me, in burning incense to other gods, in bowing down to the works of their hands [Jer 1:16].

Listening to this Word of God spoken by Jeremiah, once again we encounter the great sin of the Old Testament: idolatry. But perhaps, surprisingly to some, it’s also the great sin of today. Whenever I talk about this, many people respond with disbelief. Apparently, they assume idolatry requires the worship of statues or images, large and small, of pagan gods. But to engage in idolatry simply means placing something or someone above the worship of God. It’s to violate God’s first commandment:

I am the Lord your God…You shall not have other gods beside me. You shall not make for yourself an idol or a likeness of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or serve them [Dt 5:6, 7-9].

Today the world serves many idols: money, possessions, fame and celebrity, power, sex, …the list goes on. Not surprisingly the list hasn’t changed much since the time of Jeremiah. The people, and especially Judah’s leaders, didn’t want to hear God’s judgment and refused to accept it. Neither did they want to hear what God had planned for them: the invasion of Judah by the Babylonians and the destruction of Jerusalem. And so, they simply vented their anger on Jeremiah – much easier to blame the messenger than listen to the message. In fact, Jeremiah’s prophecy angered the princes so much they threw the prophet in prison. And that’s where he was when Babylon took the Holy City. Ironically, the Babylonians treated Jeremiah with more respect than his own people. They released him from prison, showed him great kindness, and allowed him to choose where he wanted to live.

But let’s focus on those opening verses of Jeremiah’s book of prophecy, a passage that describes his call by God, his call to be a prophet. The passage reveals many interesting things about this call, things that relate not only to Jeremiah, but also to each of us.

First of all, Jeremiah was set apart for God’s work from the very beginning – not just from his birth, but before he was even in the womb.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you… [Jer 1:5]

I knew you -- I loved you and chose you -- God revealed to Jeremiah. I dedicated you – I set you apart to do my work in the world. I made you a prophet. I called you. And I did all this before you existed in the world. What a wonderful revelation!

But God was speaking not only to Jeremiah, because God’s love is both infinite and universal. Yes, He loves prophets and apostles. But He loves you as well. He loves all whom He has created. And He calls each one of us to do His work in the world.

We must never forget this. God has a plan for every person He has created. This revelation by God, one repeated frequently throughout Sacred Scripture, lays the foundation for the consistent Church teaching on abortion as an intrinsic evil. To willfully destroy the life of an unborn child, a life for which God has a plan, is no different from the destruction of any innocent human life.

God’s plan for each of us is as different as the variety of the gifts he bestows. St. Paul reminds us that the Holy Spirit manifests different gifts in His people. How did he put it?

There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone. To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit. To one is given through the Spirit the expression of wisdom; to another the expression of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit; to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit; to another mighty deeds; to another prophecy; to another discernment of spirits; to another varieties of tongues; to another interpretation of tongues. But one and the same Spirit produces all of these, distributing them individually to each person as he wishes [1 Cor 12:4-11].

God, then, has given each of us gifts. All are not called to be prophets like Jeremiah, but each is called to be, as St. Teresa of Calcutta liked to say, “something beautiful for God.” Our life’s work as Christians consists in allowing God to show us those gifts and then using them to further God’s work in a sinful world. One warning: God will often ask you to do what you thought impossible. He will call you to your weaknesses, and by doing so, demonstrate to you and to others His remarkable power.

We see this when Jeremiah responds to God’s call. Like most of us, Jeremiah is more focused on himself and the personal demands of this call. It’s a very human response, isn’t it? As I mentioned earlier, Jeremiah was young when God called him. The thought of being a prophet must have terrified him, so much so that he protested, telling God that he neither spoke well nor was old enough to earn the respect of the people. Isn’t it interesting how often we consider it necessary to tell God things that He already knows. But God dismissed Jeremiah’s fears:

Do not say “I am too young.” To whomever I send you, you shall go; whatever I command you, you shall speak [Jer 1:7].

These concerns of Jeremiah’s mirror those of Moses when he was called by the Lord in the Book of Exodus:

Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? [Ex 3:11]

…and

If you please, my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and tongue [Ex 4:10].

But it was through the weakness of Moses, Jeremiah, the Apostles, and so many others that God accomplishes His work in the world. It is through your weaknesses and mine that He will accomplish much today. But first, like Moses and Jeremiah and the Apostles, we too must respond to God’s call.

Jeremiah’s youth also offers us insights into God’s plan for the salvation of the world. Let’s recall those words that St. Peter used on the day of Pentecost when he quoted the prophet Joel:

I will pour out a portion of My Spirit on all mankind: Your sons and daughters shall prophesy; your young men shall see visions [Acts 2:17; Joel 3:1-5].

Yes, indeed, brothers and sisters, God will raise up young people in a special way to renew the face of the earth. And just as He chose Jeremiah to speak His truth to the people of Judah, He will empower new Jeremiahs to speak to the world today:

Today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms to uproot and to tear down, to destroy and to demolish, to build and to plant [Jer 1:10].

As young as these modern-day Jeremiahs may seem to us old folks, they are not too young for God. You and I must never cease telling our young people – telling our children, our grandchildren, the youth of our parish – the same words St. Paul addressed to his spiritual son, St. Timothy:

Let no one have contempt for your youth, but set an example for those who believe, in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity [1 Tim 4:12].

I am convinced this young generation today is destined to do great things. I know this because Satan has tried so hard to destroy it. He fears what the Lord can do through this new generation that he has helped kill a third of them even before their birth. And what of those who managed to escape the evil of abortion and survive until birth? Satan has tried to abuse, brainwash, and enslave them through dysfunctional families, secular humanism, substance abuse, and sexual promiscuity. But the survivors of the survivors are here; they know God's love and believe in Him. It is these, the young ones who have survived Satan's onslaught, that God will use to renew the face of the earth. Pray for them.

Since we’re unable to meet – at least for now – you might want to take some time this week and read the rest of this wonderful book of prophecy. There is so much to learn from Jeremiah, a prophet who suffered much and like so many who did God’s work in the world, opened his soul to God. As you will discover, Jeremiah didn’t hesitate to tell God what he thought, to share his troubles with the Lord and plead for help and strength. Perhaps soon we’ll take another look at this special Prophet and walk through at least some of the key portions of the book he left for us.

God’s peace be with you all.

Homily: 5th Sunday of Lent - Year C

Readings:  Is 43:16-21; Ps 126; Phil 3:8-14; Jn 8:1-11

Have you ever been embarrassed alone? What I mean is: have you ever been embarrassed just thinking about something stupid you did in the past? I don’t know about you, but I certainly have. It’s especially then that I wish I had a more selective memory.

And yet our Christian faith encourages us to confess our sins, to put them behind us, and to look ahead, to look to the future. Of course, we’d all like to be able to do this, to forget the past, but it’s not so easy is it?

The Destruction of Jerusalem and the Exile to Babylon

We even encounter this in the Old Testament. In our first reading, the Jews, exiles in Babylon, look back nostalgically to a more glorious past. They long for the kind of liberation their ancestors experienced when they were led out of Egypt. They long for the loving care God extended to them during their wanderings in the desert. They long for a return to the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And they remember, too, it was their stubbornness, their disobedience, their sinfulness, that led them into exile. But God, speaking through Isaiah, chastises them:

"Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" [Is 43:18-19]

God wants them to trust in Him, to look forward not backward, to put their sins and their idolatry behind them and to serve the Living God. He wants them to realize that much better things await them in the future, that they remain His Chosen People, and that through them He will bring salvation to the entire world.

In today’s second reading we find St. Paul in a similar position. Paul had a past too, a past he could hardly forget, even if he wanted to. For before he was a Christian, Paul was a persecutor of Christians.

"I imprisoned many of the holy ones with the authorization I received from the chief priests," Paul tells us elsewhere,  and when they were to be put to death I cast my vote against them" [Acts 26:10]

Yes, Paul carried a heavy burden, but he also knew that God had given him incredible graces. And so he can declare:

One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.

Yet, despite Paul’s words, he couldn’t really forget the past. And he confirms this by ceaselessly telling stories: how God dealt with Israel over the centuries; what God did for the world through Christ; and, more personally, how God brought him, the least of the saints, to faith.

Yes, his past was important to Paul, and to forget it would be to forget what he once had been and what God had done for him. For Paul to forget his story was to forget his God.

The same is true for the woman caught in adultery. Despite Jesus’ “Neither do I condemn you” [Jn 8:11], neither she nor we can afford to forget her story. Not she, simply because it’s her story. And not we, because she’s really all of us, everyone from Adam until judgment day, all of us in need of a Savior, in need of forgiveness.

She’s the story of salvation, of sin and mercy, of sin committed and sin forgiven. And even though her sin is forgiven, she can never forget it, because it’s a part of her life.

Paul, a prisoner in Rome

Of course, for her, for Paul, for the exiled Israelites, for all of us, the danger lay in living in the past. For some, like the Israelites, it may involve basking in the glory days, yearning for them, and despairing of God’s saving act tomorrow. For Paul, languishing in a Roman prison as he writes to the Philippians, it would be easy to long for the time of miracles – for the road to Damascus and the days of amazing grace that followed.

The risk for the adulteress may well have been her sense of guilt. How can a God who prizes fidelity ever forgive my infidelity? How can my husband ever forgive me? How can I forgive myself? This Jesus, this strange, unique, compassionate man has said he won’t condemn me, that no one dares to condemn me. But how can I live with everyone knowing? How can I live with myself?

No, we shouldn’t live in the past. The Jewish exiles are called to focus on the “new thing” that God will raise in their midst. Paul must fix his eyes on the new life in Christ about which he constantly preached. And the woman must also begin a new life. She must not only go and sin no more, but also get to know and love the God who refused to condemn her. No, we can’t and shouldn’t live in the past.

A sense of nostalgia is a normal, human reaction to the constant change we encounter in the world, in our lives, in our Church. But to actually try to live in the past, to turn all of our attention to what once was…well that can be disastrous.

The point is, the Church is still God’s community of salvation. God still acts here, just as He still acted in Babylon. God acts through His People, wherever they are.

The other danger is to ignore the current challenges of life in favor of those glory days. And these challenges come in all flavors, don’t they? Whether it’s debilitating illness or forced retirement, old age or the nursing home, wayward children or alcoholism or family problems, or whatever. They can make us feel not only different, but diminished, and tempt us to push them away, to look back to happier, more stable times. And yet, as Christians we are called to confront the present and to look to the future.

Confront your sin, and go and sin no more, Jesus tells the woman and He tells us. As a Christian, I must keep growing until I die; for the goal of Christian striving, oneness with the living Christ, is never perfected here. No, for us the glory days are still ahead: life with Christ in glory.

And so, I must “strain forward” as Paul did, press on, keep dying with Christ so as to live more fully. For the true disciple of Jesus Christ, tomorrow is always better than yesterday, for each day is a new creation in the presence of a living God, a loving God.

And lastly, just like the woman in the Gospel, we must learn to accept Christ’s forgiveness. So many people don’t. They go through life, wallowing in guilt, afraid of hell, tormented by their pasts, unable to make peace with their brokenness and human frailty. This isn’t why God became man. This isn’t why He died that horrible death on that dark Friday afternoon.

"I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me," St. Paul insists, "and given himself up for me“ [Gal 2:20]. And that love is there, even in my sinfulness. So fix your eyes not on yesterday’s sin, but on today’s forgiveness and tomorrow’s hope. Repent, yes. But remember, the repentance that saves is not ceaseless self-scourging but fresh self-giving, a new birth of love.

Only two weeks of Lent are left. If you really want to rise with Christ, repeat the song He sings to you: “See, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth” [Is 43:19]. Come to think of it, as Christians, we are the new thing. Why not spring forth?

Homily: Year B, 4th Sunday of Lent

Readings: 2 Chr 36:14-16, 19-23; Ps 137; Eph 2:4-10; Jn 3:14-21

Well, here we are, smack dab in the middle of Lent, and we find the Church reminding us to be joyful; for this weekend we celebrate Laetare Sunday with its theme of hope and joy in anticipation of Easter. It’s a theme that threads its way through all of the readings we just heard, a theme reminding us that despite the darkness we so often encounter, despite all the sorrows and challenges of life, as Christians we have good reason to be joyful.

Lent, you see, is a time of hope and joy because it is also a time of forgiveness. This is the message of our readings: that no matter our sinfulness, when we turn to God in repentance, He forgives. We see this clearly manifested in our first reading from Chronicles.

God’s chosen people, driven from their homes like cattle, exiled to pagan Babylon for their sins, live in the darkness of despair. As we just heard in our Responsorial Psalm, by the streams of Babylon they sat and wept when they remembered Zion…and so they repented. And God forgave. But he punctuated His forgiveness in a way they could never have anticipated. He has Cyrus, King of Persia, free them from their bondage and allow them to return to Jerusalem. The pagan Cyrus even sends them off with a blessing from the Lord, the one true God.

By the Waters of Babylon

Here we see not only God’s forgiveness, but also a demonstration of His love, a mere foretaste of the love He will offer on the Cross, a love far beyond anything we could ever imagine. It’s this love that Jesus shares with Nicodemus as the two of them meet in darkness.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone who was a lot smarter than you? I have a dear friend who’s a small-particle physicist. Years ago we shared an office when we both taught at the Naval Academy. I was always interested in what he was working on, and so I once asked him about a paper he had just presented at a conference.  For the next 20 minutes I listened to what I am sure he believed was a very basic outline of his work. Oh, I caught the general gist of what he was telling me, but most of it was way over my head. So I just smiled and occasionally nodded.

I suspect that Nicodemus felt a bit like that as he listened to Jesus, and heard so much that he didn't understand.

He came to Jesus looking for answers, answers about who Jesus was, as well as answers to humanity’s greatest questions. Nicodemus was an important man, “a ruler of the Jews”, John tells us, and so he approached Jesus only at night to avoid being seen. This ruler and teacher of Israel, this esteemed member of the Sanhedrin, is courageous enough to go to Jesus, but too fearful to approach the Light of the World except under the cover of darkness.

But at least he goes to Jesus, doesn’t he? And he listens. He listens to the words of the Word of God and hears a summation of all our hopes and joys:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” [Jn 3:16-17]

Unlike His teaching to the crowds, Jesus doesn’t speak in parables to Nicodemus. Indeed, He calls on the Torah, the Law, and refers to the scene in the Book of Numbers in which Moses, obeying God’s command, ties a bronze serpent to a pole and lifts it up for the people to see. Looking on it, the people are healed from the bites of the poisonous snakes that plagued them.

In the same way, Jesus tells Nicodemus, the world will be healed of its sinfulness when it looks on the Son of Man lifted high. But Nicodemus doesn't yet realize that Jesus is talking about the Cross. In time he will understand the full meaning of Jesus’ words, just not yet.

This lifting up of the Cross, brothers and sisters, becomes our task, if we’re courageous enough to do it. We must lift Jesus up on the Cross, lift Him up and show this sign of God's healing love to the world. This is why we make the Sign of the Cross. This is why we have a crucifix raised high above the sanctuary. Yes, God so loved the world…

Good and evil, hope and despair, sin and forgiveness, light and darkness – Jesus teaches and Nicodemus gets a lesson he will never forget, even if he does not yet understand its full meaning. For as Jesus teaches this teacher of Israel, He clearly defines and separates darkness from light, the darkness of sin from the Light of the World.

How did John put it? “…the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.” [Jn 3:19] It is this Light, and this Light alone, that illuminates the path, our path, the way to eternal life.

Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks to the apostles at the Last Supper, with these words: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” [Jn 14:6] Jesus calls us to follow the way, to step out of the darkness and into His Light.

Only those ashamed of their lives choose to live in darkness. Jesus calls us to let go of all that shames us, to set aside our fears, and to accept His forgiveness. God sees and knows all of our shame, brothers and sisters – our stupidity, our pettiness, our spiritual malignity – and He takes it all on Himself. He bears the full weight of our sins as He hangs from that Cross, and does so out of a love that is beyond our comprehension.

In that love He calls us to repentance, just as He called the Chosen People who in exile wept and remembered. In our brokenness we are like the exiles in Babylon, separated from all that they truly loved. And it was in forgiveness that they received the gift of return, a return to the Holy City, a return to the presence of God in their lives.

In the same way He offers us a gift of return to discipleship, a return to God’s grace, where we can once again be right with God and His Church. He came not to condemn us but to save us, to forgive us. In reconciliation He offers us the gift of sacramental forgiveness, our first step on that path to return, to lifelong conversion. And like the exiles returning from Babylon, our journey should be a journey to freedom. This is the journey we are called to undertake during the holy season of Lent.

After his 40 days in the desert, Jesus begins His public ministry with the words, “Repent and believe in the Gospel” [Mk 1:15] -- for our journey is always a journey of repentance, a journey from a self-generated place of exile. And it’s never easy, for the path is littered with fears and doubts and temptations. One thing we learn is we can’t do it alone. We’re simply not courageous and fearless and faithful enough, and our crosses are just too heavy to bear. We need God to lift that burden from our shoulders and shower us with the gifts of the Spirit.

As we journey from slavery to freedom, the wounds we pick up along the way remind us that the risen Jesus held out His wounded hands to Thomas as proof of His own journey of love, a journey that transformed the world forever. It is the risen Christ whom the Father raised up from the tomb, the risen Christ who gives us hope.

Is there any better reason to be joyful today?