NOTES for Jer 31:23-40

Today the prophet speaks of the future new covenant with His people. This covenant will be based on direct knowledge of the Lord, on personal faith, and on each person's personal responsibility before God.

This change of covenant from the old to the new does not happen automatically. If today we speak of ourselves as participants in the new covenant established through Jesus Christ, then unfortunately this does not mean that we have already grasped and embodied in life the New Testament principles spoken of in this prophecy of Jeremiah. Many Christians still live not by their own faith but by someone else's, saying: "I believe what the Church believes," or "Let the church leaders answer before God for all church problems." Every day we need to break through to our own heart, so that we ourselves love, believe, trust God, and take responsibility for ourselves and for our neighbors. This is incompatible with a consumer attitude toward God or toward the Church. It requires personal knowledge of God as a Person and of His will.

The promise given from above through the prophet is unshakable: life will surely be reborn. But then, to our surprise, we discover that after all the cataclysms it must be built on entirely new foundations. It would appear that after the people failed to remain at the level set in the time of Moses, even a simple return to the original degree of walking before God would already have been an important achievement. Yet the Lord leads those who trust Him farther and farther, opening new horizons.

Now we hear words about personal responsibility replacing collective responsibility. This means that responsibility before the Lord is no longer mutual liability: each person must answer for his own deeds personally, and responsibility will not even be shifted onto descendants. The prophecy proclaims a radical shift in the understanding of the value and uniqueness of each person, helping humanity as a whole to mature.

But even this is not enough: these words serve only as a preface to the promise of a new covenant. The former covenant was broken unilaterally by people, but it was not canceled by the Lord Himself. Therefore the new covenant is not simply the abolition of the Old; it means that the proclaimed commandments will be inseparably inscribed into the very essence of the human being.

Can we say that we who live in the time of the New Covenant are already what we ought to be according to the prophecy? Such a claim would sound strange. But we are called to become exactly that, for the Lord gives each of us the chance to go to Him.

What is the New Covenant, the new alliance, the new agreement spoken of in the prophecy? The title of a book? Certain obligations between two parties—God and human beings? A name for Christianity, as distinct from the prophets' “Old Testament faith”? To some extent, of course... But it seems that this is not about a new religion, and still less about a new book or new commandments. Rather, the newness lies not in the content—for faith, in a general sense, can have only one content: God—but, so to speak, in the medium. The new covenant is written neither on tablets of stone, nor on paper, nor on server disks. Its medium is the human person. God will inscribe His will, His love, and His very Self within the human person; He will act in and through the human person: first in one unique Man, and then in all who share in His covenant.

It is interesting that this text is of the Old Testament, but speaks about the New, that is God warned people beforehand, 6 centuries ago, of what He is going to do for our salvation. It is really necessary to think about the meaning of these words.

"[I] will be their God, and they shall be my people.", it is a formulation of what God proposed to people still in the covenant with Moses, what comes true, when people fulfill God's law. The problem is that God's law is not being fulfilled. The human sinfulness, slavery to sin disturbs. And here is what the New Testament is all about. Thus, the Lord says: "I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts", - which means God promises to make the law not to be an external establishment for the person, but his internal, motivated by " the knowledge of God", a profound personal contact with Him. But sin indeed, separates man from God, that is why God is going to destroy (" will remember no more") this barrier. How? "I will forgive their iniquity" - the forgiveness of sins. And now remember the Gospel - and you will accept that it tells about the fulfillment of all God's promises in Jesus Christ.

If to proceed from, how much is opened variously and widely to people God's lovingkindness and how God opened a lot to us about Him (indeed, in Christ is manifested all the plenitude of the Divinity bodily), then is imperative the conclusion that with the birth of the Church, the religious history of humanity has ended. Properly, it is like that: in fact, what can God give us again, having given His Son for our sake? God’s gift in Christ is so immense that we need centuries to realize and contain it. The possibility to find a genuine life in the Church is so real that nothing more is required indeed. But it is only a part of the affair: Divine’s.

If we read attentively what God said about the New Testament in the Bible, especially the above mentioned words by the prophet Jeremiah, or the words of the prophet Ezekiel pronounced a few years later (Ezekiel 36:26-27), becomes quite evident the rightness of one modern saint, who said that Christianity is only beginning. The prophets speak about such a deep transformation of people, when the fulfillment of the will of the Creator will be for us an internal necessity, and not an external. The action of the Holy Spirit on the participants of the New Testament is called, as it seems to fill us such that the realization of human freedom should be not sin, but unity with God so that the fulfillment of our destination could become our free choice.

A great dream since the antiquity has inflamed the spirits and hearts of the best of people: to do that sin does not reign in us. For that were created religious systems and philosophic doctrines, but mostly for that people tried to create a perfect society. Those who grew upon the Bolsheviks, will remember here of their promise that in communism work will become a voluntary need of all the members of the society. In fact, they were very unoriginal, simply did as monkeys. Then it turned out that to do such thing, without violating the freedom of the person is impossible. And only God fulfilling all His promises, says through the prophets that it will be like that, because it is our freedom to be holy, paid by the Blood of His Son. It is clear that the fulfillment of this promise in us hasn’t yet come true, but it already depends on ourselves. Among other things, we therefore received a mighty perspective – if not the whole humanity, then every person.

For a person living many centuries after the catastrophe of captivity and the return from it, brought up in an entirely different culture, it is not always simple to understand this exultant joyful news that "God will have mercy on His people." At times it is just as difficult to accept such ideas about God, who now destroys cities and villages in anger, now forgives them and returns them from captivity. But one way or another, we all live in this world, where the mystery of suffering is replaced by the mystery of salvation. And that means this exultation, this joyful round dance in which "old men and young men together" and in which "sorrow is turned into joy," can become an expression of our faith as well, of our knowledge that God loves us no matter what.