St. Augustine, commenting on the feast of St. Lawrence which we celebrated the other day, says you don’t have to be a martyr to follow Jesus Christ. You can be who you are, where you are, by following him in his humanity. We all have our place, like the many flowers and plants in a garden.

The garden of the Lord includes – yes, it truly includes – not only the roses of martyrs but also the lilies of virgins, and the ivy of married people, and the violets of widows. There is absolutely no kind of human beings who need to despair of their call; Christ suffered for all. It was very truly written about him: who wishes all  to be saved, and to come to the acknowledgement of the truth.

  So let us understand how Christians ought to follow Christ, short of the shedding of blood, short of the danger of suffering death. The Apostle says, speaking of the Lord Christ, Who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal to God. What incomparable greatness! But he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and being made in the likeness of men, and found in condition as a man. What unequalled humility! (Augustine, On the Feast of St.Lawrence)

I notice in our garden these days some little plants and flowers I don’t know. There they are springing up unannounced and unnoticed. I don’t know their names or what they’re good for, but they bring their own beauty and completeness to our garden.

St. Francis de Sales used this same analogy to describe the various ways of holiness. So let’s notice and let’s learn from the humble flowers and plants in our garden. Not crabgrass, though. I don’t think it’s humble.

Let my eyes stream with tears day and night, without rest, Over the great destruction which overwhelms the virgin daughter of my people,over her incurable wound.

If I walk out into the field, look! those slain by the sword; If I enter the city,look! those consumed by hunger. Even the prophet and the priestforage in a land they know not. (Jeremiah 14:17-24

Today’s first reading from our lectionary is a classic picture of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 598 BC, from the Prophet Jeremiah. The dead still wait to be buried, people are starving for food, prophets and priests wander about bewildered by what’s happened. 

Just as important as the description of the devastated city is Jeremiah’s reaction to it. He’s no distant onlooker, he’s there, part of it all, and his eyes are filled with tears, day and night.

That’s Jeremiah. It’s his city and his people that have been struck “a blow that cannot be healed.” Instead of the Babylonians or the Judean leaders whom he had warned, Jeremiah addresses God. “You alone have done all these things.”

Does Jeremiah have something to say about our situation today?

“Nowhere else in the Old Testament does the eternal, invisible God become so involved in human experience and communicate within it as in the person of Jeremiah,” Fr. Carroll Stuhlmueller, CP, writes in his commentary on Jeremiah in the Catholic Study Bible.

Jeremiah  struggles with God. He “paradoxically combines exceptional obedience to God with vigorous argumentation against God, he struggles with doubt and anger, and at times succumbs to them, only to be purified and transformed (Jer. 9:1; 15:19).”

There are no quick answers for him, Fr. Carroll writes: “The biblical message comes  not simply as a finished polished discourse, but as an intuition, or to use Jeremiah’s words , as ‘fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones’ ( Jeremiah 20:10). Jeremiah frequently provides us with a message on its way to becoming the final word of God, struggling to come to birth and seeming lost in the dark birth canal. “(Jeremiah, 20:17) (Reading Guide 304-305)

As we look at our own world in the grip of a devastating wars, climate change, global pandemics, what about Jeremiah’s words to God: “You alone have done all these things.” 

I think we struggle like him. 

For this week’s homily, please watch the video below.

For the next week or so, we’re reading the Prophet Jeremiah from our lectionary. Born about 650 BC, Jeremiah spoke to a nation in its final days of crisis before the Babylonians captured Jerusalem and took away its leading citizens into exile in Babylon in 598 BC.

Jeremiah wasn’t accepted during his lifetime, for the most part. Discredited, arrested and imprisoned by his enemies, he urged religious reform and wise political alliances to Judea’s kings and leaders. His influence grew only after his death as the exiled Jewish community in Babylon reflected on his words and actions. 

Jeremiah influenced the prophets Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah 40-66, and some of the psalms. He remained in Jerusalem after its destruction and later was forced into exile in Egypt where he died, but there is no information about his death.

Our reading for Thursday from Jeremiah is a beautiful summary of his message:

You were “as a bride following me in the desert.” I brought you to a “garden land” which you defiled, the Lord says to the people of Jerusalem. “Two evils have my people done: they have forsaken me, the source of living waters. They have dug themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that hold no water. “  (Jeremiah 2:1-3, 7-8, 12-13)

A “garden land”, symbol for Jeremiah and others of God’s promises, comes from the garden from the Book of Genesis, where God first gave humanity life. Now it’s offered again, but the “garden land” can be refused. 

“Living waters” also is a favorite symbol of the prophets. The person who is just is like a tree planted by living waters, Psalm 1 says.  A just people grow by God’s living waters. The cisterns we dig dry up and break. 

“With you is the fountain of life, O Lord”, our responsorial psalm says today. 

Jeremiah is mentioned in Matthew’s gospel in Peter’s answer to Jesus’ question “Who do people say I am?”  They say you are Jeremiah or one of the prophets, Peter responds.  (Matthew 16:14) Selections from Jeremiah are read in the lectionary in the 16th to the 18th weeks of the church year, year 2, to accompany the readings from Matthew which describe Jesus facing opposition as he begins his ministry in Galilee. In lent and Holy Week Jeremiah is read as Jesus faces betrayal and death at the hands of his enemies. 

Readings from Jeremiah occur in the Sunday readings, usually in the same context. He’s found in the church’s morning prayers: Jeremiah weeps over a desolate land after Jerusalem’s destruction by the Babylonians.  ( Jeremiah 3 10-14, Friday Morning, 3) The prophet proclaims God’s promise of a “garden land” . (Jeremiah 14 17-21, Thursday Morning 1)