The first reading is from Jeremiah, which book I have never read and about which I know absolutely nothing. I’m going to have to do something about that.

But the reading is classic prophets prefiguring the coming of the Messiah stuff. “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” Then comes a really lovely line: “I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

I really like the imagery of writing upon hearts. I like how it’s not about rules or commandments but rather about the human heart and what the human heart wants and needs and desires and loves. I remember my religion textbook from college defining all religion as a search for an ultimate reality, a something else that many religions define as “god.” And so here seems to me a real recognition of that, of not just a story of how God creates and rules, but how also the human heart wants and seeks.

And the placing of the law within, that’s both the writing on the heart, the need and love for God coming from within but then also the placing of the law is Christ himself, God becoming man, God placing himself within the people as people, as a person. I think of how Christ tells us in St. Matthew that he has come not to abolish the law but to fulfill the law and the prophets.

Later I look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the great website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Well well well, right there, right at the beginning of the catechism, part one, chapter one, section one begins “The desire for God is written in the human heart.” I love it when things like that happen.