First Sunday of Advent
JEREMÍAS 33, 14-16
Behold, the days are coming ‑ declares the Lord ‑
when I will fulfill the good promise
that I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
In those days and at that time,
I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David,
and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.
In those days Judah will be saved,
and Jerusalem will dwell securely.
And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”
Jeremiah is a prophet who feels close to us, both because of his life context and his message. He lives in the worst period of the kingdom of Judah, threatened with destruction by the power of the Babylonians, actually destroyed and led into exile.
He opposes the official interpretations of the relationship with Yahweh: for him, God is the spouse of the people; he offers love more than justice. The covenant is not something juridical and external, but a personal relationship of fidelity with God.
There is only one step to go from Jeremiah to Jesus. And all this costs him a life of constant persecution, being viewed unfavorably by the public authorities and even by the people, and (probably) dying obscurely in Egypt, a fugitive from his land. Not only in his words but in his life itself, we discover in Jeremiah a kind of figure of Jesus.
But, in the midst of so much calamity, Jeremiah never loses his trust in God’s salvation. Today’s text is like a hymn of hope against all hope.
What the lyrics of this hymn are announcing is completely absurd, unthinkable for that moment. But the prophet has more confidence in the power and goodness of God than in all the external signs that predict enormous calamities. And, although he himself announces those calamities, he is able to believe that despite them, despite the imminent destruction of the city and the temple, one can continue trusting in God and in his love for the people.
1 THESSALONIANS 3, 12 and 4, 2
May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may strengthen your hearts, to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.
Finally, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God, just as you are doing, you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
This letter is probably the oldest of the New Testament writings. Written by Paul from Corinth in the year 51 to the Christians of Thessalonica, a community founded by Paul himself shortly before, to give thanks to God for their faith and also to address the problem of the second coming of Christ, which the Thessalonians expected immediately.
The letter is full of precious messages, exhortations to a faithful and practicing community. Perhaps the most beautiful of these texts is from the same letter, chapter 5, 8:
“But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ…”
The fragment we read today is a general exhortation to the Christian life and to progress unceasingly in holiness.
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.