The Mosaic covenant on Mount Sinai estab- lished how the people of God must conduct themselves in the Promised Land. Even though they witnessed the signs and wonders, they did not have a personal connection with God, nor did they hear His voice personally. Their only link to God was through the prophets, the rituals and external observances that were stipulated in the law of Moses. As time went by the law became a burden. They got attracted to the lifestyles of their neighbors and the gods they worshiped. They forgot the God of Israel and the covenant with Him. As they drifted away from the God of Israel, they lost the Promised Land, the temple of God and the ark of the covenant. They ended up in Babylon as exiles.In Babylon they came to their senses. They repented and turned to God and God heard their cry.

In today’s first reading God speaks to the exiles in Babylon through the Prophet Jeremiah; The days are coming,” declares the Lord,“when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenantI made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them.”

It was God’s plan that His people know Him personally, and intimately as a wife would know her husband. He wanted them to be in love with Him, long for Him, and be committed to Him. They however, did not have a daily walk with God. Therefore, they got distracted easily. This sounds familiar to most of us who come to an initial experience. We are on fire for God, and we want to give our lives to God completely. We spend all our energy and time doing things externally instead of sitting at His feet, being loved and ministered by Him, hearing His voice in the scriptures… As a result, we get hi- jacked by what is happening around us, we react to them instead of giving inner responses. Before long we too end up as exiles, crying out to God to save us.

God came up with Plan B for this problem of the human heart;“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord.
The new covenant would make the believers’ hearts beat in unison with God’s own heart. They would have an inner life with God. Their awareness of His presence would be strong enough to withstand the distractions, and the temptations of the human heart. Their relation- ship with Him would be so intimate, that living separated from Him would not be an option for them.
The first reading began with the words of God; “The days are com- ing”. In the Gospel the Lord Jesus says; “The hour has come”. What does these two statements mean? Do they speak of the same event or something different?

The Greeks mentioned in today’s Gospel were in fact known to be righteous Gentiles. They honored the Jewish people and their God. They came to meet the Lord Jesus to explore the possibility of be- coming His followers. It was in this context that the Lord says;“The hour has come for the son of man to be glorified”. The glory that the Lord speaks of here, and the glory we understand are two different things. We attribute glory to prestige, status, wealth. The glory that the Lord Jesus speaks of is His own death and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This is the event that God spoke of “as the days are coming” through he Prophet Jeremiah, and the Lord Jesus spoke in today’s Gospel. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit would awaken the spirit of the believer; Jew or Gentile, to live in obedience to God rather than in rebellion. In the letter to the Hebrews, the author ex- plains the Lord Jesus’ own struggle in living in obedience to God and completing His mission; “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” This also teaches us the secret on how to live on the mission the way the Lord Jesus did.
As we go through our own struggles to walk away from the mission, we can be certain that the Lord Jesus, offering up prayers on, peti- tions with fervent cries and tears on our behalf, to the one who could save us from walking away from a life with God.

Prayer: Abba Father, I can live in obedience to you only by the power of the Holy Spirit. Give me the grace to be the seed in my family. May I be wiling to die to bring your life into my family. Amen