NOTES for Jer 33:1-26
Today’s reading brings us back once again to the messianic theme: here we see a direct reference to the Messiah, called the “Branch” (v. 15). At the same time, it makes us reflect again on the providential meaning of history, particularly on how God acts as he nurtures the messianic remnant. That purification is in question (v. 8) is unsurprising: the exile was meant to be a time of purification. What is surprising is something else: through the prophet, God repeatedly emphasizes that before Judah is inhabited again, it will become a deserted wilderness abandoned by everyone (vv. 10, 12).
Historically, things were not quite like that: although Jerusalem was indeed destroyed and ceased to exist as a city for several decades, Judah as a whole never became a wilderness. One could, of course, regard the prophet’s words as poetic exaggeration. Yet it seems that more than metaphor is involved. There are also the spiritual processes that transformed post-exilic Jewry into a genuine people-community, to such an extent that anyone who joined the synagogue was considered a Jew, whatever his ancestry. Achieving such a result required a complete spiritual remoulding, wholly impossible in a time of well-being, let alone prosperity. Sadly, we have to acknowledge that for fallen human beings prosperity sometimes poses a greater spiritual danger than the gravest calamities. The same often applies to entire peoples, including God’s people.
The messianic remnant is, above all, a new spiritual quality of the people, one to which there could be no smooth transition from its former, pre-exilic condition. Simply being cleansed of particular historical sins was not enough: it was necessary to pass through a national catastrophe, lose everything, and experience in their own history what total collapse meant—not only national, but religious and even spiritual—in order, having endured, to become that people-community in which a few dozen people were found who accepted the Messiah when he came. Such is the price of being chosen by God. A price that neither the Church nor the synagogue must forget.