Homily for Friday, Week 16 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Friday
16th Week of Ordinary Time

July 24, 2020
Jer 3: 14-17
Provincial House, New Rochelle, N.Y.

“I will appoint over you shepherds after my own heart, who will shepherd you wisely and prudently” (Jer 3: 15).

We’ve just begun reading from Jeremiah, by word count the longest book of the Bible.  Most of those words announce doom for Judah and Jerusalem or tell of the prophet’s personal misfortunes—to the extent that the word jeremiad means “a prolonged lamentation or complaint; a cautionary or angry harangue.”

Today’s 4-verse passage is an exception to that tone.  It’s a word of promise, a word of hope.  Judah’s exiles, tho few in number, will be called back to Jerusalem, and there they will prosper:  “When you multiply and become fruitful in the land, says the Lord…” (3:16).  God will give them good shepherds, wise and prudent shepherds (priests and governors) in place of the false, misleading shepherds who brought about Jerusalem’s ruin at the hand of the Chaldeans, aka Babylonians.

The Good Shepherd (fresco in the catacombs of St. Callistus)

In fact, Jerusalem will thrive so much that “all nations will be gathered together to honor the name of the Lord at Jerusalem, and they will walk no longer in their hardhearted wickedness” (3:17).  God’s redemption is forthcoming.  The returned Judeans won’t even miss the ark of the covenant, the sacred sign of God’s dwelling among them—which disappeared when the Chaldeans captured the city and looted the temple—disappeared until Indiana Jones found it.  Instead, the whole city will be the Lord’s throne:  “At that time they will call Jerusalem the Lord’s throne” (3:17).

We hear repeatedly in the gospels and epistles that Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled the words of the prophets and psalms.  So it is with this passage.

The Father appointed Jesus as a shepherd after his own heart, and Jesus in turn appointed shepherds to continue the work his Father appointed for him.  Shepherding, you remember, is one of the key images in Don Bosco’s 1st dream.  We pray God thru Don Bosco’s intercession to make us wise and prudent shepherds after the heart of his Son and like our father Don Bosco.

Jesus Christ became the ark of the new covenant that God made with humanity.  In him the fullness of Deity resides (Col 2:9).  We have no need to think of or remember the ark that Moses made.  In Jerusalem the Lord was enthroned—on a cross, and from that throne he draws all people to himself (John 12:32), to the throne of grace (Heb 4:16).  We have in our midst the living presence of this Lord who gathers all nations to himself, that they may “no longer walk in their hardhearted wickedness” but might be converted into God’s children by grace and “honor the name of the Lord,” from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).  May we be among those who honor the Lord, who glorify our Father in our daily words and actions, who are his witnesses wherever we are.