Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Congratulations with the feast of the Resurrection of the Lord!

Last week we briefly discussed the Holy Prophet of God Isaiah. This week, let us focus our attention on the next prophet, St. Jeremiah. When we read the book of the Holy Prophet of God Jeremiah, we learn much about him; his character clearly appears before us. We see that he was a very gentle and sensitive person, who had a great love for his God, dedicated practically the entirety of his long life to Him, loved his people, Jerusalem, and the Temple of God, and suffered much for his fiery and foreboding preaching. The Holy Hierarch Gregory the Theologian calls Jeremiah ‘the sorrowing prophet’. As is the case with the book of the Holy Prophet Isaiah, quotations from the Book of Jeremiah are found multiple times in the New Testament, and our Lord Jesus Christ Himself used images from this book in His own teachings and sayings.

The Holy Prophet of God Jeremiah lived about a hundred years after Isaiah. He began his prophetic service as a teenager during the reign of King Josiah (the second half of the 7th century B. C.), continued his service until the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonian (or Chaldean) King Nebuchadnezzar in 588 B.C., and later continued to preach in Egypt. While he was still alive, the sermons of the saint were written down by his faithful disciple Barrack, and Jeremiah himself was able to proofread them. This was done twice, since the first scroll was destroyed by the Jews, who were displeased with his message.

Saint Jeremiah lived during a very difficult time for the Jewish people. Although by that time the danger from the Assyrians had passed, the Chaldeans now took their place and just as the Assyrians had done earlier, were gathering for themselves an empire, leading away into exile the conquered peoples. At first the Jews, thinking that God would protect them, did not understand that the days of their kingdom were numbered. At the same time, they were careless in their religious life, poorly followed the law of Moses, and often, if not constantly, fell into idolatry.

Jeremiah prophesied often, with force and with foreboding, that the Lord would abandon His chosen people, that the Babylonians would destroy Jerusalem, and that the Jews would be led away into exile for neglecting the true God and for their captivation with idolatry. The prophet preached against not only the king and his ministers, but also against the priests and other prophets, who were infected with the same vices. As a good shepherd or a loving parent, the Holy Prophet Jeremiah changed the tone of his message when it became clear for absolutely everyone that he had been right and that Jerusalem would soon cease to be. Instead of foreboding words and repeated warnings of impending catastrophe, he began to prophecy about the return of the Jews to the Promised Land from exile. Because of his fiery preaching, many Jews hated the prophet, persecuted him, imprisoned him, and planned to kill him. For this reason the Holy Prophet Jeremiah himself can be considered an image or type of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Dear Brothers and Sisters, the message of St. Jeremiah is always relevant for Orthodox Christians. We, just as the ancient Jews, are the chosen and beloved people of our Creator, for He justified us with the blood of Jesus Christ and are, in the most literal sense, joined to Him when we commune of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. Despite these great blessings which our God has bestowed upon us, we continue, at least at times, to sin against His commandments, and sometimes even to turn away from Him, preferring our idols (that is, our passions, those earthly things that we are most attached to). In these penitential days of the Christmas Fast, let us read the book of the Holy Prophet of God Jeremiah, hear his words, and turn towards God with all our hearts in repentance, so as to escape not from an earthly exile in Babylon, but from an eternal and spiritual enslavement to the devil.

priest Alexis