From: Jeremiah 26:1-9
Jeremiah arraigned
[7] The priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking
these words in the house of the Lord. [5] And when Jeremiah had finished spea-
king all that the Lord had commanded him to speak to all the people, then the
priests and the prophets and all the people laid hold of him, saying, “You shall
die! [9] Why have you prophesied in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘This house
shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate, without inhabitant’?” And all
the people gathered about Jeremiah in the house of the Lord.
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Commentary:
26:1-45:4. The first part of the book was a lengthy collection of oracles, usually
in verse form, interspersed with narrative passages; this second part consists
largely of prose narratives. It is very likely that most of them were written down
by Baruch, Jeremiah’s secretary, a person who was very close to him from the
year 605 on (cf. 32:12, 16; 36:4-20; 45:15 and the Introduction to this book).
They tell us about Jeremiah’s preaching and about the difficulties he encountered
in the fulfillment of his ministry. The entire account, only occasionally interrupted
by the inclusion of oracles, culminates in the so-called “Sufferings of Jeremiah”
(37:1-44:30), in which we are told in some detail about what Jeremiah underwent
in the period after the first deportation to Babylon, in 597. It was not only that
people misunderstood him; he was ill-treated by those still living in the land of
Judah and eventually, after the second conquest and deportation in the year 587,
he was forcibly taken to Egypt, where he died.
These pages describe his clashes — first with the people, priests and prophets
(26:1-29:32) and then with the kings who occupied the throne during those years
of turmoil (34:1-36:32). The episodes are not in chronological order, and they de-
rive from a number of separate collections of documents. One collection contains
narratives of events in the reign of Jehoiakim (chaps. 26; 35-36; and 45); another,
events in the time of Zedekiah (chaps. 27-29). In the centre of this part comes
what is called the “Book of Consolation” (30:1-33:26), highly poetic and theolo-
gical pages.
26:1-29:32. The connecting thread in the first section of prose accounts of the
life of Jeremiah is the prophet’s fidelity to the mission entrusted to him by the
Lord, despite ever-increasing opposition from his fellow citizens.
26:1-24. This chapter deals with the same incident in the temple that was narra-
ted in 7:1-8:3 (see note), and which occurred in 608 BC. It contains a summary
of what the prophet said on that occasion, and people’s reactions to it (vv. 7-24).
The religious life of the nation hinged on the temple, whose importance had in-
creased further as a result of Josiah’s recent reforms; but Jeremiah proclaims
that the temple will be destroyed; it will he reduced to rubble, like the old shrine
at Shiloh (vv. 2-6). This prophecy so angered people, priests and prophets that
they called for Jeremiah’s death (vv. 7-9), but the authorities managed to calm
them down and Jeremiah escaped with his life (vv. 10-19), probably because his
sincerity impressed the rulers: he was a man ready to risk his life in order to be
faithful to his prophetic mission. Although one cannot he sure where the New
Gate (v. 10) was, the rulers’ intervention clearly had a judicial character to it,
since legal proceedings took place at the city gates. The New Testament con-
tains clear echoes of this account — in the deliberations of the Sanhedrin on
what to do with Jesus after he was arrested (cf. Mt 26:5-68 and par.), in the sen-
tence handed down by Pilate (cf. Lk 23:22), and also in the account of the mar-
tyrdom of St Stephen (cf. Acts 6: 12-14).
This episode dramatically illustrates the sort of clashes that Jeremiah became
involved in when carrying out his mission from the Lord. He has harsh things to
say, and meets resistance from the people, who have even begun to think that
nothing that offends their sensibilities or contradicts their desires can come from
God. Even so, Jeremiah does not back down, for the Lord gives him the strength
to stay true to his calling (cf. 1:7-10).
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.
From: John 11:19-27
The Raising of Lazarus (Continuation)
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Commentary:
1-45. This chapter deals with one of Jesus’ most outstanding miracles. The
Fourth Gospel, by including it, demonstrates Jesus’ power over death, which the
Synoptic Gospels showed by reporting the raising of the daughter of Jairus (Mat-
thew 9:25 and paragraph) and of the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:12).
The Evangelist first sets the scene (verses 1-16); then he gives Jesus’ conversa-
tion with Lazarus’ sisters (verses 17-37); finally, he reports the raising of Lazarus
four days after his death (verses 38-45). Bethany was only about three kilometers
(two miles) from Jerusalem (verse 18). On the days prior to His passion, Jesus
often visited this family, to which He was very attached. St. John records Jesus’
affection (verses 3, 5, 36) by describing His emotion and sorrow at the death of
His friend.
By raising Lazarus our Lord shows His divine power over death and thereby gives
proof of His divinity, in order to confirm His disciples’ faith and reveal Himself as
the Resurrection and the Life. Most Jews, but not the Sadducees, believed in the
resurrection of the body. Martha believed in it (cf. verse 24).
Apart from being a real, historical event, Lazarus’ return to life is a sign of our
future resurrection: we too will return to life. Christ, by His glorious resurrection
though He is the “first-born from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:20; Colossians 1:
18; Revelation 1:5), is also the cause and model of our resurrection. In this His
resurrection is different from that of Lazarus, for “Christ being raised from the
dead will never die again” (Romans 6:9), whereas Lazarus returned to earthly
life, later to die again.
21-22. According to St. Augustine, Martha’s request is a good example of confi-
dent prayer, a prayer of abandonment into the hands of God, who knows better
than we what we need. Therefore, “she did not say, But now I ask You to raise
my brother to life again. [...] All she said was, I know that You can do it; if you
will, do it; it is for you to judge whether to do it, not for me to presume” (”In Ioann.
Evang.”, 49, 13). The same can be said of Mary’s words, which St. John repeats
at verse 32.
24-26. Here we have one of those concise definitions Christ gives of Himself, and
which St. John faithfully passes on to us (cf. John 10:9; 14:6; 15:1): Jesus is the
Resurrection and the Life. He is the Resurrection because by His victory over
death He is the cause of the resurrection of all men. The miracle He works in
raising Lazarus is a sign of Christ’s power to give life to people. And so, by faith
in Jesus Christ, who arose first from among the dead, the Christian is sure that
he too will rise one day, like Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:23; Colossians 1;18).
Therefore, for the believer death is not the end; it is simply the step to eternal life,
a change of dwelling-place, as one of the Roman Missal’s Prefaces of Christian
Death puts it: “Lord, for your faithful people life is changed, not ended. When the
body of our earthly dwelling lies in death, we gain an everlasting dwelling place in
Heaven”.
By saying that He is Life, Jesus is referring not only to that life which begins be-
yond the grave, but also to the supernatural life which grace brings to the soul of
man when he is still a wayfarer on this earth.
“This life, which the Father has promised and offered to each man in Jesus
Christ, His eternal and only Son, who ‘when the time had fully come’ (Galatians
4:4), became incarnate and was born of the Virgin Mary, is the final fulfillment of
man’s vocation. It is in a way the fulfillment of the ‘destiny’ that God has prepared
for him from eternity. This ‘divine destiny’ is advancing, in spite of all the enigmas,
the unsolved riddles, the twists and turns of ‘human destiny’ in the world of time.
Indeed, while all this, in spite of all the riches of life in time, necessarily and inevi-
tably leads to the frontiers of death and the goal of the destruction of the human
body, beyond that goal we see Christ. ‘I am the resurrection and the life, He who
believes in Me...shall never die.’ In Jesus Christ, who was crucified and laid in the
tomb and then rose again, ‘our hope of resurrection dawned...the bright promise
of immortality’ (”Roman Missal”, Preface of Christian Death, I), on the way to
which man, through the death of the body, shares with the whole of visible crea-
tion the necessity to which matter is subject” (Bl. John Paul II, “Redemptor Ho-
minis”, 18).
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.