Friday, May 1

Apostolic · 7th–6th century BC

Prophet Jeremiah

Weeping prophet of Judah's fall and the new covenant

Jeremiah, son of the priest Hilkiah of Anathoth, was called by God to prophesy while still a youth, in the days of King Josiah of Judah. For some forty years he warned Jerusalem of the coming judgment for its idolatry and injustice, enduring mockery, beatings, imprisonment, and being cast into a miry pit for his faithfulness. He witnessed the fulfillment of his words in the Babylonian destruction of the city and the Temple in 586 BC, mourning it in the laments associated with his name, and was afterward carried against his will into Egypt, where tradition holds he was stoned to death by his own people. Amid judgment he proclaimed hope: the promise of a new covenant written on the heart, which the Church sees fulfilled in Christ. His book stands among the great prophets of the Old Testament.

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