Readings:
Jeremiah 31-32
Hebrews 4

Jeremiah 31-32

Jeremiah’s oracle from God about the return from exile continues in this chapter. This would be something to hang your hat on and look forward to if you’re reading it from Babylon. You’re in exile and maybe you personally didn’t worship idols, or maybe you did, but you’d have to realize by now, even if you didn’t say it out loud and admit it, that this punishment is completely just for the crime committed. So this promise of clemency and parole so to speak, it would be welcomed and longed for.

At the end of these words of comfort, God makes another promise. He says that in the days after their return he will make a new covenant with them. One where they will know God personally and intimately.

In chapter 32 we skip back ahead to the latter part of Zedekiah’s reign. Jeremiah received a prophecy from God that his cousin would offer him a parcel of land for sale and this would be a sign from God. So when that happens he purchased the offered land and announced to the people that this was a sign that one day land and houses will again be bought and sold in this land.

It seems like a nonsensical thing to do; buy a piece of land in a country that is being invaded and destroyed. Occupying armies don’t respect deeds, foreign kings don’t care who claims the land rights in places they’ve conquered. So in his contemporaries’ eyes he’s just wasted his money, but this is just like the other symbols that Jeremiah has acted out prophetically. God is saying that one day this normal way of living and doing business will return. This invasion and exile is temporary and not permanent.

Hebrews 4

We’re told that the promise of entering his rest (heaven) is available but not guaranteed. The offer and gift is on the table, but we have to accept and not reject the gift of salvation, and turning our back on God through mortal sin is how we would reject it.

To make this point even more crystal clear, he revisited how the rebellious Hebrews in the wilderness had the opportunity to enter the promised land but forfeited it through rebellion and disobedience.

There are three rests of which he speaks: the first is the Sabbath, in which God rested from his works; the second is Palestine, in which the Jews found rest from their hardships; and the third is rest indeed—the kingdom of heaven— in which those who obtain it rest from their labors and troubles

Saint John Chrysostom

He then moves on to next part of this letter, where he talks about the Melchizedek priesthood of Christ, and compares it to the lesser priesthood of Aaron that was passed down through generations to the present day. Christ’s priesthood far surpassed that of the Old Covenant and is eternal, unlike the Aaronic priesthood that expired upon the death of the priest. Christ died, but now lives and his priesthood is forever.

Everything that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the “one mediator between God and men.” The Christian tradition considers Melchizedek, “priest of God Most High,” as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique “high priest after the order of Melchizedek”; “holy, blameless, unstained,” “by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified,” that is, by the unique sacrifice of the cross.

CCC 1546

Tomorrow’s Readings:
Jeremiah 33-35
Hebrews 5