Jeremiah prophesies during the time of the demise of the kingdom of Judah, but the people of Judah resist his message of doom. Yet, even as their exile is upon them, the Lord promises the people that one day, there will be a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, a covenant more intimate than all previous covenants, for, the Lord says, I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts. The new covenant will bind the people from within rather than from without; it will reside at the center of their beings, moving them from the depths of who they are to attend to their relationship with God. They might well pray Psalm 51, Create a clean heart in me, o God, expressing their desire to start over with a clean slate, that they might know the joy of God’s salvation. Their faith may have ebbed for a time, but they can regain that faith in the God who loves them, through prayer.
In John’s version of Jesus’ agony in the garden, Jesus acknowledges that he himself is the grain of wheat that will fall to the ground and die, but yet will produce much fruit. The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that Jesus knew very human struggles; when he was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to his Father. Through prayer, Jesus was able to go to his own heart, as we must learn to do, for to pray is to open ourselves to the God who loves us. As he falls to the ground and dies, Jesus is leading us to our own transformation, a dying to self, that we might follow him. What is written on our hearts can win out.
As in Jeremiah’s prophecy, Jesus’ promise also looks to the future: Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. The joy of the eternal salvation Jesus obtains for us lies in our recognition that this life is not what it’s all about; we endure its difficulties, but the promise of life to come makes it possible for us to endure them. Our access to faith ebbs and flows throughout our lives, as does our access to our own hearts. A closed heart is a sign of the ebbing tide of faith. At such times, the covenant God wrote upon it is still there; we just don’t have access to it. What God writes is that he loves us, and that love is absolute. To access the absolute love of God, we need to be willing to go to our hearts, where he dwells, and we do so as we open, turning to him in prayer, and journeying with him, through death to new life.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
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