A prophet has a responsibility for the moment, an openness to what the moment reveals. He is a person who knows what time it is.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets
The Tears of Things Reader’s Guide describes the message of the prophet Jeremiah:
The prophet Jeremiah is known for his tears and his rage. He said, “Whenever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout ‘Violence and destruction!’” (Jeremiah 20:8). He’s known as a prophet of wrath but, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “It would be more significant to say that,” like us, “Jeremiah lived in an age of wrath.” [1]
The son of a priest from Anathoth, a small town near Jerusalem, Jeremiah railed against the religious and political establishments in the seventh century BCE. He proclaimed an agonizingly unpopular message of his people’s imminent destruction by the Babylonian empire, a message “like a burning fire shut up in [his] bones” (Jeremiah 20:9). He foretold famine, plunder, exile, and captivity while his friends and family abandoned him and the royal court imprisoned him.…
Somehow, this heartbroken prophet held fast to a vision of collective renewal through relationship with God: “I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord; and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they will return to me with their whole heart” (Jeremiah 24:7). [2]
Richard Rohr considers Jeremiah’s message of faithfulness for our time:
If we believe God is angry in the way that humans are, then it’s too easy for us to end up being angry “without limit.” In fact, if we believe the Creator is always critiquing, judging, and punishing everything, it should be no surprise that our entire world is bathed in rage and resentment. Isn’t this, in fact, much of our experience today? Someone must show us the way through. It cannot be done by law or order, but with a remembering of the great and divine pity modeled and taught by saints and prophets.
I surely believe some form of projection of our anger onto others is at the heart of the nonstop world wars of “Christian” nations. It’s at the center of those cultures that encourage punitive or emotionally withholding parents or people with “stiff upper lips.” Crying, at its best, teaches us to hold the emotion instead of projecting it elsewhere.
In Jeremiah’s prophecies, all hopes for the future of the Jewish people lie in those who endured a three-stage process of transformation: first, those who entered into exile; second, those who retained hope and did not turn bitter during that exile; and third, those who returned from exile with generativity and praise in their hearts instead of self-pity.
These people are the change agents for culture, paralleling the classic three stages of purgation, illumination, and union. Each of these stages operates as a change agent in different ways. Into, through, and back home could well be the necessary movements for any of us. [3]
References:
[1] Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets (Harper and Row, 1962), 106.
[2] Adapted from The Tears of Things Reader’s Guide (CAC Publishing, 2025), 9.
[3] Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage (Convergent Books, 2025), 106.
Image Credit and inspiration: Ricardo IV Tamayo, untitled (detail), 2021, photo, Cuba, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Together, we hold the flowering of compassionate action, remembering our shared humanity and deep connection to one another and all of creation.
Story from Our Community:
Many years ago I worked as a hospital chaplain. As I arrived at work one snowy morning, I parked my car in the full parking lot. During the day, the weather warmed and melted the snow and when I emerged, I saw that I had parked diagonally across two parking spaces. There was a nasty note on my windshield that read, “Where did you learn to drive? If you park like this again, I will slash your tires.” My initial reaction was one of rage and self-righteousness. Then I looked over at the hospital tower and wondered why the person who left the note was in that parking lot. I thought—maybe his wife was about to give birth, or her father had been brought in for an emergency. Reflecting on the interior experience of the unknown person, I felt my rage soften into compassion. I prayed for them all the way home.
—Dan P.
