Jeremiah 2: 1-3, 7-8, 12-13
The word of the Lord came to me, saying: Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, Thus says the Lord:
I remember the devotion of your youth,
your love as a bride,
how you followed me in the wilderness,
in a land not sown.
Israel was holy to the Lord,
the first fruits of his harvest.
All who ate of it were held guilty;
disaster came upon them,
says the Lord.
I brought you into a plentiful land
to eat its fruits and its good things.
But when you entered you defiled my land,
and made my heritage an abomination.
The priests did not say, “Where is the Lord?”
Those who handle the law did not know me;
the rulers transgressed against me;
the prophets prophesied by Baal,
and went after things that do not profit.
Be appalled, O heavens, at this,
be shocked, be utterly desolate,
says the Lord,
for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living water,
and dug out cisterns for themselves,
cracked cisterns
that can hold no water.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Faith of Our Youth
Do you remember the devotion of your youth? In our first reading, God reminds Israel of a time when they loved God fiercely, when they trusted God entirely.
I recently heard an older woman speak about a retreat in which she spent every day revisiting memories from her childhood with God. Spiritual moments, experiences of devotion, times when God felt present to her as a young child. Perhaps many of us have some moments like this, maybe buried deep.
There can be a temptation to forget those moments, view them as childish, or even to scorn them. We might think they somehow mean less for the more “mature” spirituality that we have now.
I suspect if we search our hearts for one or two of those moments from our youth, we will be consoled. We might even find a less complicated, and freer faith than we have now.
—Billy Critchley-Menor, SJ, is a Jesuit of the Midwest Province; he writes on Substack at From Every Side and is the author of As It Is: Poems. He currently studies at Boston College.
Prayer
Lord, you told your disciples to let the children come to you, and said that the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. Grant me a childlike faith and trust in you that I may follow you freely. Amen.
—Jesuit Prayer team