Thursday of 18th Week in Course
Human beings tend to make a mess of their lives and their societies, simply when each one has the motto “look out for number one.” Because number one is the ego. I make decisions based on what will please me, regardless of what that does to anybody else. When everybody in a society lives that way, you’ve got Sodom and Gomorrah. The elites of the Israelite kingdoms lived that way, turning their back on the Sinai Covenant, breaking all the Ten Commandments, all the way from the rule of David to that of Zedekiah. God made us out of love so we could love Him and love each other selflessly, so he sent prophet after prophet, Jeremiah being the last, and for the past few days we have been hearing his story of prophecy and rejection. That was the last straw. God stirred up the hurricane called Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. Death and destruction for Israel and the king, and exile for most of the surviving elite.
But the Lord had introduced Himself to Israel in the theophany at Sinai. He went before Moses on the mountain and invoked His own Name: “The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness and faithfulness, maintaining loving devotion to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished; He will visit the iniquity of the fathers on their children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” So the long-deserved punishment would not last forever. Here in Jeremiah’s prophecy we see God promising a new covenant with all God’s people–even the Israelites who had been scattered centuries before by Assyria. And the Law would not be written on stone tablets, which were lost when the Temple was destroyed, but on the hearts of everyone with faith.
How would that happen? First, our sins, both individual and corporate, must be forgiven. That was made possible with God’s only-begotten Son took flesh in the Virgin’s womb and paid the debt of sin through His life, death and Resurrection. Then, the Church that Christ promised here in Caesarea Philippi would become the new Israel, the instrument by which all people could be baptized into Christ’s death and live His life, obeying the Law of Love written on their hearts.
Human beings tend to make a mess of their lives and their societies because of selfishness. But that leaves them miserable and without hope. Since Christ has created in us clean hearts, full of the love of Christ from our faithful hearing of His Word and sharing in His Eucharist, we can respond to the Spirit of Christ animating our hearts, and draw everyone we encounter to Christ in His Church. That’s the plan of God to restore our life and society. May He be blessed forever. Amen.
