"Look! Those Slain" all around Us (Jer 14: 17-22)

In today’s first reading, Jeremiah 14: 17-22, Jeremiah laments that if he walks “out into the field, look! those slain by the sword,” and, if he enters the city, “look! those consumed by hunger.”  If Jeremiah enters the fields and cities of our world, he will come across persons slain by drones, rockets, gunfire, grenades, bombs and other weapons of violence.  He will enter refugee camps and the slums of our cities and find those “consumed by hunger” and thirst. Like Jeremiah and his our ancestors, we “wait for peace, to no avail; for a time of healing, but terror comes instead.” Do we,  like Jeremiah and, in our day, Pope Francis, “recognize…our wickedness, the guilt of our…[ancestors, our predecessors, our government officials engaging in corrupt decision-making, our clergy abusing vulnerable persons, parents harming their children, and on and on].” Do we acknowledge, as Jeremiah and Pope Francis do, “that we have sinned against” the Lord?

We certainly deserve to be asked, as Jeremiah asked his people,  among “the nations’ idols is there any that gives rain,” are there any that reconcile enemies, makes whole that which is broken,  frees those who are enslaved, imprisoned, maimed by corruption, blinded by sin; any that frees prisoners of obsessive gambling, abusive behaviors toward  children and youth and women, releases perpetrators of violence, slaves of deceit, greed, selfishness, and/or trapped  into all of the “isms” that dominate our cultures?

With the prophet Jeremiah, we, too,  in our day and age need to cry out: “Is it not you alone, O Lord, our God, to whom we look? You alone have done all these things” that lead to salvation,  reconciliation, restoration, and the  righting of wrongs being done to millions of people in the world of today. O, God, “[f]or the glory of your name, deliver us” (today responsorial psalm).