Saints celebrated on the 1st of May
SAINT JEREMIAH THE PROPHET
Jeremias [Saint Jeremiah] lived at the close of the seventh and in the first part of the sixth century before Christ; a contemporary of Draco and Solon of Athens. In the year 627, during the reign of Josias, he was called at a youthful age to be a prophet, and for nearly half a century, at least from 627 to 585, he bore the burden of the prophetic office.
FROM A PRIESTLY FAMILY
He belonged to a priestly (not a high-priestly) family of Anathoth, a small country town northeast of Jerusalem now called Anata; but he seems never to have performed priestly duties at the temple. The scenes of his prophetic activity were, for a short time, his native town, for the greater part of his life, the metropolis Jerusalem, and, for a time after the fall of Jerusalem, Masphath (Jeremiah 40:6) and the Jewish colonies of the Dispersion in Egypt (Jeremiah 43:6 ff.).
"LOFTY IS JAHWEH"
His name has received varying etymological interpretations (“Lofty is Jahweh” or “Jahweh founds”); it appears also as the name of other persons in the Old Testament. Sources for the history of his life and times are, first, the book of prophecies bearing his name, and, second, the Books of Kings and of Paralipomenon [Chronicles]. It is only when taken in connection with the history of his times that the external course of his life, the individuality of his nature, and the ruling theme of his discourses can be understood.
"A PROPHET HATH NO HONOUR IN HIS OWN COUNTRY"
A far more exact picture of the life of Jeremias has been preserved than of the life of any other seer of Sion. It was an unbroken chain of steadily growing outward and inward difficulties, a genuine “Jeremiad”. On account of the prophecies, his life was no longer safe among his fellow-citizens of Anathoth (11:21 ff.), and of no teacher did the saying prove truer that “a prophet hath no honour in his own country”.
"TRUTH DRAWS HATRED UPON ITSELF"
When he transferred his residence from Anathoth to Jerusalem his troubles increased, and in the capital of the kingdom he was doomed to learn by corporal suffering that veritas parit odium (truth draws hatred upon itself). King Joakim could never forgive the prophet for threatening him with punishment on account of his unscrupulous mania for building and for his judicial murders: “He shall be buried with the burial of an ass” (22:13-19).
THE KING WAS OUTRAGED AT THE PROPHECIES
When the prophecies of Jeremias were read before the king, he fell into such a rage that he threw the roll into the fire and commanded the arrest of the prophet (36:21-26). Then the word of the Lord came to Jerermias to let Baruch the scribe write again his words (36:27-32). More than once the prophet was in prison and in chains without the word of the Lord being silenced (36:5ff.); more than once he seemed, in human judgment, doomed to death, but, like a wall of brass, the word of the Almighty was the protection of his life: “Be not afraid... they shall not prevail: for I am with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee” (1:17-19).
A MORAL CHANGE
The religious opinion he maintained, that only by a moral change could a catastrophe in outward conditions prepare the way for improvement, brought him into bitter conflict with the political parties of the nation. The Sion party, with its superstitious confidence in the temple (7:4), incited the people to open revolt against Jeremias, because, at the gate and in the outer court of the temple, he prophesied the fate of the holy place in Silo for the house of the Lord; and the prophet was in great danger of violent death at the hands of the Sionists (26 cf. 7).
CAUGHT BETWEEN ALL THE FRONTS
The party friendly to Egypt cursed him because he condemned the coalition with Egypt, and presented to the King of Egypt also the cup of the wine of wrath (25:17-19); they also hated him because, during the siege of Jerusalem, he declared, before the event, that the hopes placed on an Egyptian army of relief were delusive (36:5-9). The party of noisy patriots calumniated Jeremias as a morose pessimist (cf. 27, 28), because they had allowed themselves to be deceived as to the seriousness of the crisis by the flattering words of Hananias of Gabaon and his companions, and dreamed of freedom and peace while exile and war were already approaching the gates of the city. The exhortation of the prophet to accept the inevitable, and to choose voluntary submission as a lesser evil than a hopeless struggle, was interpreted by the war party as a lack of patriotism.
THE SCAPEGOAT OF A BLINDED NATION
Even at the present day, some commentators wish to regard Jeremias as a traitor to his country - Jeremias, who was the best friend of his brethren and of the people of Israel (2 Maccabees 15:14), so deeply did he feel the weal and woe of his native land. Thus was Jeremias loaded with the curses of all parties as the scapegoat of the blinded nation. During the siege of Jerusalem he was once more condemned to death and thrown into a miry dungeon; this time a foreigner rescued him from certain death (37-39).
HE FELT HIS OWN FATE WAS BOUND UP WITH THAT OF THE NATION
Still more violent than these outward battles were the conflicts in the soul of the prophet. Being in full sympathy with the national sentiment, he felt that his own fate was bound up with that of the nation; hence the hard mission of announcing to the people the sentence of death affected him deeply; hence his opposition to accepting this commission (1:6). With all the resources of prophetic rhetoric he sought to bring back the people to “the old paths” (6:16), but in this endeavour he felt as though he were trying to effect that “the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots” (13:23).
HIS PRAYERS FOR HIS PEOPLE
He heard the sins of his people crying to heaven for vengeance, and forcibly expresses his approval of the judgment pronounced upon the blood-stained city (cf. 6). The next moment, however, he prays the Lord to let the cup pass from Jerusalem, and wrestles like Jacob with God for a blessing upon Sion. The grandeur of soul of the great sufferer appears most plainly in the fervid prayers for his people (cf. especially 14:7-9, 19-22), which were often offered directly after a fiery declaration of coming punishment. He knows that with the fall of Jerusalem the place that was the scene of revelation and salvation will be destroyed.
"THOUGHTS OF PEACE, AND NOT OF AFFLICTION"
Nevertheless, at the grave of the religious hopes of Israel, he still has the expectation that the Lord, notwithstanding all that has happened, will bring His promises to pass for the sake of His name. The Lord thinks “thoughts of peace, and not of affliction”, and will let Himself be found of those who seek (24:10-14). As He watched to destroy, so will He likewise watch to build up (31:28). The prophetic gift does not appear with equal clearness in the life of any other prophet as alike a psychological problem and a personal task. His bitter outward and inward experiences give the speeches of Jeremias a strongly personal tone.
MORE THAN ONCE HE SEEMS IN DANGER OF LOSING HIS SPIRITUAL BALANCE
More than once this man of iron seems in danger of losing his spiritual balance. He calls down punishment from heaven upon his enemies (cf. 12:3; 18:23). Like a Job among the prophets, he curses the day of his birth (15:10; 20:14-18); he would like to arise, go hence, and preach instead to the stones in the wilderness: “Who will give me in the wilderness a lodging place... and I will leave my people, and depart from them?” (9:2; Hebrew text, 9:1). It is not improbable that the mourning prophet of Anathoth was the author of many of the Psalms that are full of bitter reproach.
HE REMAINED BEHIND
After the destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremias was not carried away into the Babylonian exile. He remained behind in Chanaan, in the wasted vineyard of Jahweh, that he might continue his prophetic office. It was indeed a life of martyrdom among the dregs of the nation that had been left in the land. At a later date, he was dragged to Egypt by emigrating Jews (11 ff.). According to a tradition first mentioned by Tertullian (Scorpiace 8), Jeremias was stoned to death in Egypt by his own countrymen on account of his discourses threatening the coming punishment of God (cf. Hebrews 11:37), thus crowning with martyrdom a life of steadily increasing trials and sorrows. Jeremias would not have died as Jeremias had he not died a martyr.
HIS FEAST DAY
The Roman Martyrology assigns his name to 1 May. Posterity sought to atone for the sins his contemporaries had committed against him. Even during the Babylonian Captivity his prophecies seem to have been the favourite reading of the exiles (2 [Chronicles] 36:21; Ezra 1:1; Daniel 9:2). In the later books compare Sirach 49:8 ff.; 2 Maccabees 2:1-8; 15:12-16; Matthew 16:14.
A BRIGHTER FUTURE
Jeremias is the prophet of mourning and of symbolical suffering. This distinguishes his personality from that of Isaias, the prophet of ecstasy and the Messianic future, of Ezechiel, the prophet of mystical (not typical) suffering, and of Daniel, the cosmopolitan revealer of apocalyptic visions of the Old Covenant. No prophet belonged so entirely to his age and his immediate surroundings, and no prophet was so seldom transported by the Spirit of God from a dreary present into a brighter future than the mourning prophet of Anathoth.
Consequently, the life of no other prophet reflects the history of his times so vividly as the life of Jeremias reflects the time immediately preceding the Babylonian Captivity. A sombre, depressed spirit overshadowes his life, just as a gloomy light overhangs the grotto of Jeremias in the northern part of Jerusalem.
THE PROPHET OF MYRRH
In Michelangelo’s frescoes on the ceilings of the Sistine chapel there is a masterly delineation of Jeremias as the prophet of myrrh, perhaps the most expressive and eloquent figure among the prophets depicted by the great master. He is represented bent over like a tottering pillar of the temple, the head supported by the right hand, the disordered beard expressive of a time of intense sorrow, and the forehead scored with wrinkles, the entire exterior a contrast to the pure soul within. His eyes seem to see blood and ruins, and his lips appear to murmur a lament. The whole picture strikingly portrays a man who never in his life laughed, and who turned aside from scenes of joy, because the Spirit told him that soon the voice of mirth should be silenced (16:8 ff.).
Equally characteristic and idiosyncratic is the literary style of Jeremias. He does not use the classically elegant language of a Deutero-Isaias or an Amos, nor does he possess the imagination shown in the symbolism and elaborate detail of Ezechiel, neither does he follow the lofty thought of a Daniel in his apocalyptic vision of the history of the world.
SIMPLE, WITHOUT ORNAMENT
The style of Jeremias is simple, without ornament and but little polished. Jerome speaks of him as “in verbis simplex et facilis, in majestate sensuum profundissimus” (simple and easy in words, most profound in majesty of thought).
Jeremias often speaks in jerky, disjointed sentences, as if grief and excitement of spirit had stifled his voice. Nor did he follow strictly the laws of poetic rhythm in the use of the Kinah, or elegiac, verse, which had, moreover, an anacoluthic measure of its own. Like these anacoluthae so are also the many, at times even monotonous, repetitions for which he has been blamed, the only individual expressions of the mournful feeling of his soul that are correct in style.
Sorrow inclines to repetition, in the manner of the prayers on the Mount of Olives. Just as grief in the East is expressed in the neglect of the outward appearance, so the great representative of elegiac verse of the Bible had neither time nor desire to adorn his thoughts with a carefully chosen diction.
DEVELOPING THE MESSIANIC IDEA
Jeremias also stands by himself among the prophets by his manner of carrying on and developing the Messianic idea. He was far from attaining the fullness and clearness of the Messianic gospel of the Book of Isaias; he does not contribute as much as the Book of Daniel to the terminology of the gospel. Above all the other great prophets, Jeremias was sent to his age, and only in very isolated instances does he throw a prophetic light in verbal prophecy on the fullness of time, as in his celebrated discourse of the Good Shepherd of the House of David (23:1-5), or when he most beautifully, in chapters 30-33, proclaims the deliverance from the Babylonian Captivity as the type and pledge of the Messianic deliverance. This lack of actual Messianic prophecies by Jeremias has its compensation; for his entire life became a living personal prophecy of the suffering Messias, a living illustration of the predictions of suffering made by the other prophets.
JEREMIAH WAS A MESSIANIC PROPHECY EMBODIED IN FLESH AND BLOOD
The suffering Lamb of God in the Book of Isaias (53:7) becomes in Jeremias a human being: “I was as a meek lamb, that is carried to be a victim” (Jeremiah 11:19). The other seers were Messianic prophets; Jeremias was a Messianic prophecy embodied in flesh and blood.
It is, therefore, fortunate that the story of his life has been more exactly preserved than that of the other prophets, because his life had a prophetic significance. The various parallels between the life of Jeremias and of the Messias are known: both one and the other had at the eleventh hour to proclaim the overthrow of Jerusalem and its temple by the Babylonians or Romans; both wept over the city which stoned the prophets and did not recognize what was for its peace; the love of both was repaid with hatred and ingratitude. Jeremias deepened the conception of the Messias in another regard.
From the time the prophet of Anathoth, a man beloved of God, was obliged to live a life of suffering in spite of his guiltlessness and holiness from birth, Israel was no longer justified in judging its Messias by a mechanical theory of retribution and doubting his sinlessness and acceptableness to God because of his outward sorrows.
Thus the life of Jeremias, a life as bitter as myrrh, was gradually to accustom the eye of the people to the suffering figure of Christ, and to make clear in advance the bitterness of the Cross. Therefore it is with a profound right that the Offices of the Passion in the Liturgy of the Church often use the language of Jeremias in an applied sense.
(Excerpts from Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)
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