Thursday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Jeremiah 2:1–3, 7–8, 12–13
It all began so beautifully.
In the words of Jeremiah, God remembers Israel’s love as the love of a bride.
If Jeremiah could read the five Books of Moses, he might be surprised by the way the wilderness journey is told there.
Israel’s journey through the desert is often marked by complaints, disobedience, fear, and rebellion.
But for Jeremiah, it was the best time in the relationship between God and Israel.
The Lord says:
“Sacred to the Lord was Israel, the first fruits of his harvest; should any presume to partake of them, evil would befall them, says the Lord.”
For Jeremiah, the tragedy came later.
Only after entering the Promised Land did the people abandon the Lord.
And the Lord cannot understand it:
“What wrong did your fathers find in me that they abandoned me?”
Why did they go after false gods?
Why did they exchange glory for emptiness?
This question has surfaced also in our own times.
But now it is Jesus who asks, through some visionaries:
What wrong have you found in the Lord?
What wrong have you found in the One who gave His very life for all of us?
Why have you abandoned Him and gone after delusions?
Then the Lord calls a witness.
He calls the heavens to see and to be appalled by this abandonment.
The phrase Jeremiah uses is very poetic.
God is compared to the Fount of living water.
But the people have hewn for themselves broken cisterns, cisterns that cannot hold water.
This reminds us of the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman.
She came in the heat of the day to draw water from Jacob’s well.
But that water could not resolve the thirst of her heart.
It could not heal her personal wounds.
It could not restore her place in the community.
It could not answer the story of the many men in her life.
It was like drawing water from a broken cistern.
Then Jesus offered her living water:
the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And what wonderful fruit that conversation brought.
Her testimony drew the whole city to Jesus.
And many came to believe that He is truly the Savior of the world.
The Lord cannot comprehend why people would decide to abandon Him.
This is the language of a broken heart.
A heart filled with love that receives coldness in return.
For Jeremiah, this is why the people are heading toward disaster:
personal disaster and national disaster.
The Church takes up this message and reminds the contemporary world that abandoning the Lord has dire consequences.
No technology can solve them.
No medical science can heal them.
No progress can replace the Fount of living water.
As Saint Augustine famously said:
We have been created by God, and our hearts remain restless until they find rest in Him.
In Him:
the Fount of living water.
Biblical Reflections on the Gospel of Matthew
Scripture Attribution
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993
the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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