"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).

Enduring Joy

In the  first reading of today’s liturgy, Baruch 4: 5-12, 27-29,  Baruch tells the people not to fear but to remember that the reason that they were conquered by other nations was that they had abandoned the covenant God made with them.  This did not happen, Baruch tells them, because God wanted them to be destroyed, but that they had provoked God by sacrificing to “demons, to no-gods; you forsook the Eternal God who nourished you, and you grieved Jerusalem who fostered you.”  Further on in the reading,  the holy city of Jerusalem—where God dwelt, as God dwells in our Tabernacles--says that with “joy I fostered them; but with mourning and lament I let them go.”

I could not help but think of the times the Lord is directing us and we simply ignore the Spirit’s direction and do our own thing. “With joy,” God says, “I fostered them; but with mourning and lament I let them go.”  God deeply respects our free will and does not ever force us to embrace His will.  God lets us  go to experience the emptiness, if you will, or the frustration of not having followed the way to which God was calling us. It may be as simple as calling a friend, reaching out to someone we slighted and saying “I’m sorry,”  spending some leisure time in the evening with family or community members, listening with an open mind and heart or taking time to study the Scriptures or to do some substantive reading that nurtures our spiritual lives. Or, it may be more serious, like not getting involved with the wrong crowd that leads us into selfish pursuits  or that leads us into violating the rights of another person or of doing that which violates our own personal integrity.  Baruch says to us, then:  “As your hearts have been disposed to stray from God turn now ten times the more to seek him; for he who has brought disaster [frustration, emptiness, pain] upon you will, in saving you, bring you back enduring joy.”