Homily for Tuesday, Week 18 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Tuesday
Week 18 of Ordinary Time

Aug. 4, 2026
Jer 30: 1-2, 12-15, 18-22
Ps 102: 16-23, 29
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph Residence, N.R.

Jeremiah on the ruins of Jerusalem
(Horace Vernet)

Reading Jeremiah today, we might think that God has mood swings.  In one breath, the Lord says, “Incurable is your wound” (30:12), and in the next, “See!  I will restore the tents of Jacob” (30:18).

In the 1st instance, God’s pained by Israel’s infidelity, their attention to false lovers, viz., pagan gods.  In the 2d instance, he’s open to repentance and restoration of the covenant:  “You shall be my people, and I will be your God” (30:22).

Israel’s story is our story.  Plenty of people feel “there’s none to plead [their] cause, no remedy for [their] running sore, no healing for [them]” (30:13)—because their sins weigh them down or because life is beating them down.  Nevertheless, God always looks with compassion on us and promises to everyone, despite our infidelities, laughter and glory (30:18-19)—to everyone who trusts him.  “He regards the prayer of the destitute” (Ps 102:18), which is to say of all of us.

So we pray to the Lord on our own behalf and on behalf of all humanity, so severely wounded morally and socially, so longing for restoration and healing.  We trust the Son of God to restore us spiritually and, to the extent that we carry out his teachings, also socially:  the Son who “looked down from his holy height, from heaven beheld the earth” (Ps 102:20), the Son who descended from that height to become one of our own, our leader from our kin (Jer 30:21), incarnate of the Virgin Mary, to lead us back to God.