Homilies on Jeremiah · Homily142

1[§18] "My wound is firm, whence shall I be healed?" Those who prevail over me strike me, and my wound is firm. Whether he prophesies the cross of the Lord (for the cross is a firm wound, so far as concerns those who crucify him), or whether it is said concerning all the righteous in whom a firm wound is received, or whether you hear this also of the prophet (for he too suffered the things recorded in the prophecy) — it admits the same sense according to the expression that says: "My wound is firm." "Whence shall I be healed?" And if the Savior says, "Whence shall I be healed," he prophesies the resurrection from the dead after the firm wound; and if it is taken of the righteous man too, after the wounds there comes healing again. "Becoming, it became to me as deceitful water that has no faithfulness"; for the wound does not remain, but passes away. "Therefore thus says the Lord: If you return, then I will restore you." These things again are said to each one whom God shall exhort to return to him. And a mystery seems to me to be indicated here in the "I will restore you." No one is restored to a place in which he has in no way ever been, but the restoration is to what is one's own. For instance, if a limb of mine becomes dislocated, the physician tries to make a restoration of what is dislocated. When someone comes to be outside his homeland, whether justly or unjustly, and then recovers the ability to be again in the homeland according to the laws, he has been restored to his own homeland. Understand the same for me also in the case of a soldier who has been cast out from his own ranks and is restored. He says, then, here to us who have turned away, that if we return, he will restore us. For the end of the promise is such, as is written in the Acts of the Apostles in the words, "until the times of the restoration of all things which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old," in Christ Jesus, to whom is the glory and the might unto the ages of the ages. Amen.