From: Jeremiah 23:1-6
[1] “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!”
says the LORD. [2] Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concer-
ning the shepherds who care for my people: “You have scattered my flock, and
have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend
to you for your evil doings, says the LORD. [3] Then I will gather the remnant of
my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them
back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. [4] I will set shepherds
over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed,
neither shall any be missing, says the LORD.
The future king
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Commentary:
23:1-8. The previous chapters (21:1-22:30) announced the exile to come, and
come it did, on account of the kings’ failure to keep the Covenant. The kings, in
chronological order, were the subject of the various oracles. Now Jeremiah, loo-
king to the future, uses the image of shepherds to proclaim a new era in which
God himself will be the shepherd-ruler of his people (vv. 1-4); he will raise up a
new king who will govern justly (vv. 5-6); and the new situation that will develop
after the return from exile will be more glorious than that of the period after the
exodus from Egypt (vv. 7-8). Bl. John Paul II refers to this oracle to stress that
the new people of God, the Church, will always have pastors to guide it: “In
these words from the prophet Jeremiah, God promises his people that he will ne-
ver leave them without shepherds to father them together and guide them: ‘I will
set shepherds over them [my sheep] who will care for them, and they shall fear
no more, nor be dismayed’ (Jer 23:4). The Church, the people of God, constantly
experiences the reality of the prophetic message and continues joyfully to thank
God for it. She knows that Jesus Christ himself is the living, supreme and defini-
tive fulfillment of God’s promise: ‘I am the good shepherd’ (Jn 10:11). He, ‘the
great shepherd of the sheep’ (Heb 13:20), entrusted to the apostles and their
successors the ministry of shepherding God’s flock (cf. Jn 21:15ff; 1 Pet 5:2)”
(Pastores dabo vobis, 1).
23:5-6. The promise of the new king is the key to understanding Jeremiah’s
thought. The passage is repeated (with slight variations) in 33:15-16. “The days
are coming”, a phrase often found in oracles of salvation, is a reference to the
End time, but sometimes it can mean the return from exile. The “righteous
branch”, meaning the future king, will eventually become a technical term for the
Messiah, in both Zechariah (Zech 3:8; 6:12) and the New Testament (cf. Lk 1:78):
he is “righteous”, he shall “execute…righteousness” and he will be called “the
Lord in our righteousness”. All this insistence on justice and right indicates, first-
ly, that Jeremiah wants to justify the accession of Zedekiah, whose name means
“justice of the Lord”; but he also wants to show that the future Messiah will be
David’s legal, legitimate descendant: the Lord guarantees this by calling him a
“righteous” that is “legitimate”, branch. And the main message, of course, is that
in the new era justice will reign and there will be peace and security; it will be the
time of definitive salvation.
Thus, Jeremiah is proclaiming the coming of a descendant of David who will bring
about a new era of prosperity and salvation. Jeremiah is the last prophet, in order
of time, to proclaim a Messiah King, an intermediary between God and his people.
At the same time, he is also promising direct intervention by God.
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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: Ephesians 2:13-18
Reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles in Christ
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Commentary:
11-22. What is the significance of the calling of the Gentiles to the Church?
Their previous situation, separated from Christ (vv. 11-12), has undergone radical
change as a result of the Redemption Christ achieved on the Cross: that action
has, on the one hand, brought the two peoples together (made peace between
them: vv. 13-15) and, on the other, it has reconciled them with God, whose ene-
my each was (w. 16-18). The Redemption has given rise to the Church, which St
Paul here describes as a holy temple built on the foundation of the apostles and
prophets (vv. 19-22).
14-15. “He is our peace”: through his death on the cross Christ has abolished
the division of mankind into Jews and Gentiles. The Gentiles, who had been far
away from God, from his covenant and from his promises (cf. v. 12), are now on
a par with the Jews: they share in the New Covenant that has been sealed with
the blood of Christ. That is why he is “our peace”. In him all men find that soli-
darity they yearned for, because, through his obedient self-sacrifice unto death,
Christ has made up for the disobedience of Adam, which had been the cause of
human strife and division (cf. Gen 3-4). “Christ, the Word made flesh, the prince
of peace, reconciled all men to God by the cross, and, restoring the unity of all
in one people and one body, he abolished hatred in his own flesh (cf. Eph 2:16;
Col 1:20-22) and, having been lifted up through his resurrection, he poured forth
the Spirit of love into the hearts of men” (Vatican II, “Gaudium Et Spes”, 78).
God’s plan to attract mankind to himself and to reestablish peace included the
election of the Jewish people, from whom the Messiah would be born; and in
that Messiah all the nations of the world would be blessed (cf. Gen 11:3). He
is in fact called “prince of peace” (Is 9:6; cf. Mic 5:4). However, many Jews had
come to regard their election in such a narrow-minded way that they saw it as
creating a permanent barrier between themselves and the Gentiles. Some rabbis
of our Lord’s time despised and even hated the Gentiles. The separation between
the two peoples was reflected in the temple wall which divided the court of the
Gentiles from the rest of the sacred precincts (cf. Acts 21:28). The real roots of
the separation lay in Jewish pride at being the only ones to have the Law of God
and keep it by scrupulous attention to countless legal niceties.
By his death on the cross Jesus Christ has broken down the barriers dividing
Jews from Gentiles and also those which kept man and God apart. St Paul says
this metaphorically when he says that Christ “has broken down the dividing wall,”
referring to the wall in the temple. But he is not resorting to metaphor when he
says that Christ abolished “in his flesh the law of commandments and ordi-
nances”. Christ, through his obedience to the Father unto death (cf. Phil 2:8),
has brought the Law to fulfillment (cf. Mt 5:17 and note on Mt 5:17-19); he has
become, for all mankind, the way to the Father. The Law of the Old Testament,
although it was something good and holy, also created an unbridgeable gap be-
tween God and man, because man, on his own, was incapable of keeping the
Law (cf. notes on Gal 3:19-20; 3:21-25; and Acts 15:7-11). Christ, through grace,
has created a new man who can keep the very essence of the Law — obedience
and love.
The “new man” of whom St Paul speaks here is Jesus Christ himself, who
stands for both Jews and Gentiles, because he is the new Adam, the head of a
new mankind: the “new man”, St Thomas Aquinas explains, “refers to Christ him-
self, who is called ‘new man’ because of the new form his conception took, ...the
newness of the grace which he extends ..., and the new commandment which
he brings” (”Commentary on Eph, ad loc.”).
By taking human nature and bringing about our redemption, the Son of God has
become the cause of salvation for all, without any distinction between Jew and
Greek, slave and free, male and female (cf. Gal 3:28): only through Christ’s grace
can peace be achieved and all differences overcome. Bl. John XXIII explains this
in his encyclical “Pacem In Terris”: peace is “such a noble and elevated task
that human resources, even though inspired by the most praiseworthy goodwill,
cannot bring it to realization alone. In order that human society may reflect as
faithfully as possible the Kingdom of God, help from on high is necessary. For
this reason, during these sacred days our supplication is raised with greater fer-
vor towards him who by his painful passion and death overcame sin—the root of
discord and the source of sorrows and inequalities—and by his blood reconciled
mankind to the Eternal Father: ‘For he is our peace, who has made us both one’.”
16. Through his death on the cross, Jesus Christ reestablishes man’s friendship
with God, which sin had destroyed. Pope John Paul suggests that “With our
eyes fixed on the mystery of Golgotha we should be reminded always of that
‘vertical’ dimension of division and reconciliation concerning the relationship be-
tween man and God, a dimension which in the eyes of faith always prevails over
the ‘horizontal’ dimension, that is to say, over the reality of division between peo-
ple and the need for reconciliation between them. For we know that reconciliation
between people is and can only be the fruit of the redemptive act of Christ, who
died and rose again to conquer the kingdom of sin, to reestablish the covenant
with God and thus break down the dividing wall which sin had raised up between
people” (”Reconciliatio Et Paenitentia”, 7). Redemption therefore brings about
our reconciliation with God (cf. Rom 5:10-2 Cor 5:18) and it affects everyone,
Gentiles as well as Jews, and all creation (cf. Col 1:20). This reconciliation is
achieved in the physical body of Christ sacrificed on the cross (cf. Col 1:22) and
also in his mystical body, in which Christ convokes and assembles all whom he
has reconciled with God by his redemptive sacrifice (cf. 1 Cor 12:13ff). The words
“in one body” can be taken in two senses—as referring to Christ’s physical body
on the cross and to his mystical body, the Church.
The sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, “the memorial of the death and
resurrection of the Lord, in which the Sacrifice of the cross is forever perpetuated,
is the summit and the source of all worship and Christian life. By means of it the
unity of the body of Christ is signified and brought about, and the building up of
the body of Christ is perfected” (Code of Canon Law, can. 897).
18. Prior to Christ’s coming, man was excluded from the Father’s house, living
like a slave rather than a son (cf. Gal 4:1-5). But in the fullness of time God sent
his Son to give us the spirit of sonship that enables us to call God our Father (cf.
note on Rom 8:15-17).
“The way that leads to the throne of grace would be closed to sinners had Christ
not opened the gate. That is what he does: he opens the gate, leads us to the
Father, and by the merits of his passion obtains from the Father forgiveness of
our sins and all those graces God bestows on us” (St Alphonsus, “Thoughts on
the Passion”, 10, 4).
Here we see the part played by the Holy Spirit in the work of salvation decreed
by the Father and carried out by the Son. The words “in one Spirit”, as well as
identifying the access route to the Father, also imply two basic facts: on the
one hand, that the mysterious union which binds Christians together is caused
by the action of the Holy Spirit who acts in them; on the other, that this same
Holy Spirit, inseparable from the Son (and from the Father) because they con-
stitute the same divine nature, is always present and continually active in the
Church, the mystical body of Christ. “When the work which the Father gave the
Son to do on earth (cf. In 17:4) was accomplished, the Holy Spirit was sent on
the day of Pentecost in order that he might continually sanctify the Church,
and that, consequently, those who believe might have access through Christ in
one Spirit to the Father (cf. Eph 2:18). [...] Hence the universal Church is seen
to be ‘a people brought into unity from the unity of the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit’ (cf. St Cyprian, “De Oratione Dominica”, 23)” (Vatican II, “Lumen
Gentium”, 4).
Christ has brought about salvation, and, to enable all to appropriate that salva-
tions he calls them to form part of his body, which is the Church. The Holy Spirit
is, as it were, the soul of this mystical body; it is he who gives it life and unites
all its members. “If Christ is the head of the Church, the Holy Spirit is its soul:
‘As the soul is in our body, so the Holy Spirit is in the body of Christ, that is, the
Church’ (St Augustine, “Sermon 187”)” (Leo XIII, “Divinum Illud Munus”, 8). The
Holy Spirit is inseparably united to the Church, for St Irenaeus says, “where the
Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the
Church and the fullness of grace” (”Against Heresies”, III, 24).
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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.