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| “Jeremiah Wearing the Girdle” artist and date are unknown |
Readings and Commentary:[3]
Reading 1: Jeremiah 13:1-11
The Lord said to me: Go buy yourself a linen loincloth;
wear it on your loins, but do not put it in water.
I bought the loincloth, as the Lord commanded, and put it on.
A second time the word of the Lord came to me thus:
Take the loincloth which you bought and are wearing,
and go now to the Parath;
there hide it in a cleft of the rock.
Obedient to the Lord’s command, I went to the Parath
and buried the loincloth.
After a long interval, the Lord said to me:
Go now to the Parath and fetch the loincloth
which I told you to hide there.
Again I went to the Parath, sought out and took the loincloth
from the place where I had hid it.
But it was rotted, good for nothing!
Then the message came to me from the Lord:
Thus says the Lord:
So also I will allow the pride of Judah to rot,
the great pride of Jerusalem.
This wicked people who refuse to obey my words,
who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts,
and follow strange gods to serve and adore them,
shall be like this loincloth which is good for nothing.
For, as close as the loincloth clings to a man’s loins,
so had I made the whole house of Israel
and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord;
to be my people, my renown, my praise, my beauty.
But they did not listen.
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Commentary on Jer 13:1-11
The oracle of Jeremiah uses the metaphor of the loincloth to describe the fallen nature of the people of Judah. The loincloth, unwashed and hidden, represents the people, unrepentant and fallen away. The loincloth worn as an undergarment was the clothing worn closest to man’s most intimate parts and therefore most personal. Jeremiah uses this relationship to describe the Lord’s consideration and love for Israel, which was intense (“to be my people, my renown, my praise, my beauty”), and whose fall therefore was so grievous to God (“But they did not listen”).
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Responsorial Psalm: Deuteronomy 32:18-19, 20, 21
R. (see 18a) You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
You were unmindful of the Rock that begot you,
You forgot the God who gave you birth.
When the Lord saw this, he was filled with loathing
and anger toward his sons and daughters.
R. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
“I will hide my face from them,” he said,
“and see what will then become of them.
What a fickle race they are,
sons with no loyalty in them!”
R. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
“Since they have provoked me with their ‘no-god’
and angered me with their vain idols,
I will provoke them with a ‘no-people’;
with a foolish nation I will anger them.”
R. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
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Commentary on Dt 32:18-19, 20, 21
This passage from Deuteronomy is taken from the last discourse of Moses, a section called the "Song of Moses." The great leader laments that the people have turned away from the God who saved them. The song echoes God’s anger at the people who turn their backs and worship foreign gods.
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Gospel: Matthew 13:31-35
Jesus proposed a parable to the crowds.
“The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed
that a person took and sowed in a field.
It is the smallest of all the seeds,
yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants.
It becomes a large bush,
and the ‘birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.’”
He spoke to them another parable.
“The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast
that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour
until the whole batch was leavened.”
All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables.
He spoke to them only in parables,
to fulfill what had been said through the prophet:
I will open my mouth in parables,
I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation
of the world.
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Commentary on Mt 13:31-35
The Lord continues his descriptions of the Kingdom of Heaven using two parables. The parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the yeast have the same point. What appears to be small grows to miraculous size. What has been insignificant is vastly important; what cannot be seen is unknowingly immense. The parables of the mustard seed and yeast (see also Mark 4:30-32 and Luke 13:18-21) emphasize that from the smallest of beginnings with the proclamation of the word, the Kingdom of God expands to encompass all peoples.
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Reflection:
Heavenly Father, we humbly pray that those suffering from the coronavirus be returned quickly to full health by the power of your Son’s healing presence, and those in fear be calmed through the Holy Spirit.
In Christ’s name we pray. – Amen.
The entire theme of the day is colored by Jeremiah and his vision of God’s lament. He describes God’s love with a rather gritty metaphor, that of a loincloth. We can tease that image apart and see that it has a dimension and depth that, at first blush, we might overlook.
Think about underpants – that is the purpose the loincloth served. In this case God told Jeremiah to: “Go buy yourself a linen loincloth.” He then tells the prophet to wear the cloth, but not to wash it. When we understand that this loincloth represents God’s chosen ones, the act of not washing the underwear is symbolic of a people who are not washed. They become dirty (given the nature of the garment, dirty is perhaps too polite a word, disgustingly filthy might be better). Again, when the image is of a loincloth, they become dirty with not just the dust of the journey, but with bodily filth; left unwashed this filth will fester the skin and chafe the loins. Allowed to continue, this festering will become infected and eventually can kill the person.
Once the loincloth is put on, the Lord commands Jeremiah to: “Take the loincloth which you bought and are wearing, and go now to the Parath.” The Parath is the name given to the Euphrates River in Old Testament times, a journey of roughly six hundred miles from where Jeremiah was in Palestine. A trek of that distance was undoubtedly symbolic as well. In this case the contamination of the people (i.e. the false gods, the violations of Mosaic Law, and introduction of values contrary to tradition) was perceived to flow from the Assyrians, whose roots were in the Euphrates Valley.
When we think about the state of a loincloth, unwashed after such a journey, and buried for the time it would take for Jeremiah to make that journey twice, the state of that undergarment would indeed be rotten. This was no doubt a commentary on how deeply the people had fallen into sin.
This deterioration of the relationship between God and his people is the tragic point that God laments through Jeremiah. That same refrain is also demonstrated in the Song of Moses, used as the psalm response today. Humankind constantly refuses to accept God’s love.
The shock value of this ancient parable is still there. In light of God’s later gift of his Son, and the revelation of the depth of his love for us through the giving of that gift, we see even more clearly how our unrepentant nature causes grief in the loving parent (our Heavenly Father), who wants only good and wholesome things for us.
The Gospel makes it explicit. What we turn our backs upon is nothing less than the Kingdom of God, which has now encompassed all peoples of all nations. The invitation that started with a small and insignificant nomadic people (in terms of world population) has now been extended (like yeast in dough) to include the whole world.
And still God’s offer is rejected. Even people once faithful turn away. But as fickle as we can be, God is always faithful. His hand is always extended and he invites us to wash ourselves clean and come back to him. It was for this reason that he sent his Son Jesus and for that gift we are truly thankful.
In this strange year where many of us will not be able to receive the Blessed Sacrament or celebrate as a community in our houses of worship, we must be prepared to receive spiritual communion in prayer:
My Jesus,
I believe that You
are present in the Most Holy Sacrament.
I love You above all things,
and I desire to receive You into my soul.
Since I cannot at this moment
receive You sacramentally,
come at least spiritually into my heart. I embrace You as if You were already there and unite myself wholly to You. Never permit me to be separated from You.
Amen.
Pax
[1] The picture used today is “Jeremiah Wearing the Girdle” artist and date are unknown.
[3] The readings are taken from the New American Bible, with the exception of the psalm and its response which were developed by the International Committee for English in Liturgy (ICEL). This republication is not authorized by USCCB and is for private use only.
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