Getting Ready to Pray                     

Jeremiah is known for his indictments against the House of Israel. He has warned them about the consequences of being resistant to God’s law. We have heard his feeling very sorry for himself but also for his having listened to the word of God.

What is new is the word “within.” There is a new emphasis on interiority. The Spirit of God will inspire each person to know what is the proper response. In the former relationship with God, externals were everything and they had to be taught cultically. The new covenant will not be written on stone, but within the hearts of the covenanted people.

God promises to forgive the “evil-doers” and remember not their sins. God had promised Noah that when the sins of the people gathered the clouds together for a flood, God would see the rainbow and relent.

Some Thoughts 

In the verses of our First Reading and in the entire chapter, Jeremiah is quite energetic and excited about what he now hears from God and he is speaking to the people in their captivity. Something new is going to happen and it is a promise from God to make a new covenant with the whole people of Israel. It will be new, different, and will lead to life.

Now in this new and latest covenant edition of love, God will see deep inside their hearts and see the covenant embedded there and recall the faithfulness God promised. That “within covenant” remains even though the external execution of response may be imperfect.

God does not give up on Israel’s becoming God’s people and their allowing God to be their “master.” This is a promise of great consolation and relief for those in captivity for their pasts.

  “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” Jesus is about to be seen or “glorified” by not only the Greeks who are in Jerusalem for the Passover, but by us as well. Next week we will begin watching Jesus while holding our palm fronds. Jesus, in today’s Gospel indicates that the “hour” for his glorification has arrived.

Like a grain of wheat—which must die to its being just a grain of wheat by being planted in the ground in order to bring forth food—so Jesus himself must receive his hour of dying so as to bring forth life.

The dying is the great time of “seeing” Jesus. Jesus sees this “hour” as the great act of serving God’s people. This is almost an exact pre-lecture of what Jesus will tell the Apostles after washing their feet in the next chapter.

Those who desire to follow Jesus will have some dying to do so that they might serve God’s people.

The “within” of Jesus is about to be “outed.”

We say that what goes up must come down. So too, what is inside will be revealed eventually. For Jesus, what must go down will rise again; what must die for the world, will give life to the world

For Jesus, his being Servant has been his interior and through the “signs” in John’s Gospel, we “see Jesus” from the inside, and the out.

Create a clean heart in me, O God
(Psalm 51:3)