God calls Jeremiah

Homily for Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

When God calls Jeremiah to be a prophet, the young man immediately responds that he knows not how to speak and, in addition, he is too young for this particular position. God persists in calling Jeremiah to this important role in the kingdom of Josiah, one of the kings of Israel who actually tried to reform his fellow Jews and bring them back to the covenant of Mount Sinai. Unfortunately, King Josiah was killed in battle, and as soon as he was no longer on the throne, the old idolatries reemerged.

God chooses people for specific roles not according to their gender or their age. As the beautiful passage from the first chapter of the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah notes: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.” In other words, if a person follows the call that God sends to each one of us, we can all be sure or our role in God’s plan. It is a rather astounding notion that we hear from God’s words to Jeremiah. However, what was true of him is also true of us. God chose us for a specific role in our world even before we were conceived.

Listening to the words of Psalm 71, our responsorial for today, I find it a little amusing that this Psalm was written by an elderly person, someone who was feeling on shaky ground. The psalmist reminds God that he has depended upon God from the day of his birth and has listened to all that God had taught him in his youth. Now that he is at the end of his life, he is looking for the familiar rock of refuge that he has found in God throughout his days.

By placing these two texts from the Hebrew Scriptures next to each other, it seems to me that those who framed the Lectionary for Daily Mass deliberately juxtaposed a reading about a young man with the prayer of an older person. It is clear that, whether we are young or old, whether we are at the beginning of life for coming to the end of our pilgrimage, God has a plan for each of us. Placing our trust in God is definitely the way for us to go today.