Week 17 Monday (Year 2)

Readings: Jeremiah 13.1-11; Deuteronomy 32.18-21; Matthew 13.31-35

It is one of the strangest of the 'acted parables' we come across in the writings of the prophets. Jeremiah is asked to put his unwashed underwear in a crevice of the wall of the city where it rots.

This is what will happen to my people, says the Lord, they will rot. And why this particular action when there are many other ways, more decent we might think, in which he could have made the point? Because 'I had bound them to myself as closely as a person's underwear is to them', says the Lord.

It is the kind of analogy a person will be inclined to use when they are in the grip of strong emotion, of disappointment or anger at being betrayed. In such circumstances we might well find ourselves cursing and it is no time for modesty or reserve. Precisely because the relationship that has been betrayed was of such intimacy the depth of feeling is correspondingly profound. No time to stand on ceremony as the responsorial psalm from Deuteronomy underlines: 'you have forgotten God who gave you birth'

The gospel reading has quite a different atmosphere. It is quiet and gentle, peaceful and even bucolic - the seeds do what they were created to do and so does the leaven and so it will be also with the kingdom of heaven: it will flourish according to its nature. Once again the disappointment and anger of God is overtaken by compassion and love. Once more God visits his people in order, yet again, to affirm and renew the covenant with them. This time he has sent the Son, to establish the new and eternal covenant of which the prophets had already spoken (in particular Jeremiah).

And so the story continues. In his teaching Jesus reveals things hidden from the foundation of the world. He reveals the Father to us more clearly than ever before and he sends the Spirit to transform our hearts. We continue to waver, to hear and to see but not to understand. But God is always faithful, his love is everlasting. And we know that this is not just a nice, reassuring, thought because of what Jesus has been prepared to do to seal that covenant. What he has done and what he has undergone in order to bind us intimately once again, more closely than ever, and this time forever, to the heart of God.