Patrist Wisdom: Looking to the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

Cursed is the man who puts his hope in man, and who will strengthen the flesh of his arm in him, and withdraws in his heart from the Lord. For he shall be like a shrub in the desert. He shall not see when good things come, but shall dwell in salt lands along the sea and in the desert, in a salt land where no one dwells. But blessed is the man who puts his trust in the Lord, for the Lord shall be his hope. He shall be like a flourishing tree alongside the waters which spreads its roots toward the moisture. He will not fear when the burning heat comes, for He shall be like the root in a grove in the year of drought. He shall not fear, for he shall be like a tree that does not cease yielding its fruit. (Jer 17:5–8)

Let this be said concerning the Jews and heretics who have their hope in a man, namely, their own “Christ,” whom they do not believe to be the Son of God but a mere man who is going to come. As opposed to this, the ecclesiastical man “who trusts in the Lord” listens to this: “Know that the Lord is God!” He trusts in the Lord, and so he is compared with that tree about which the first psalm sings: “He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.” Furthermore, “by water”—by the grace of the Holy Spirit, by diverse gifts, “that sends out its roots by the stream”—it receives abundance from the Lord. Or, on another note, we can also say that we have been transferred from the drought of the Jews to the everlasting grace of baptism.

He says, “It does not fear when heat comes”—either a time of persecution or the day of judgment; and “its leaves remain green,” or it will have “leafy branches”—so that it has no fear of drought but sprouts forth with the grace of all the virtues. And it is not afraid when the “time” or “year” of drought comes, when the Lord in His anger commands the clouds not to rain on Israel. And what follows, “it does not cease to bear fruit,” can be used to explain that passage that is written in Mark where the Lord comes to a fig tree and does not find any fruit on it, since it was not the time for figs, and then He curses it so that it may never produce fruit. For he who trusts in the Lord, and whose trust is the Lord, is not afraid even in the time of Jewish drought; instead, he always bears fruit, since he believes in Him who died for us once for all and will not die again and who says, “I am life.”

Jerome, Commentary on Jeremiah 3