18 December 2019
Wednesday of the Third Week of Advent
Jeremiah delivered a prophecy that the same God who rescued the Israelites from Egypt would soon rescue them from the Babylonian exile. As a result of this rescue, the naming of God would be altered (Jer 23:7-8). This is not to say that the identity of God would change, just the terminology. We would no longer be calling him “the Lord who brought his people up out of the land of Egypt,” but, instead, “the Lord who brought his people up from the land of the North,” in order to highlight God’s more recent intervention in the lives of his people.
This is a major subtext of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola: to give the retreatant a more recent experience of God’s intervention. The exercises create a space for God the creator to interact directly with the retreatant, if God so chooses. It is not uncommon for people making Ignatian retreats to have some experience of God that is so profound that it changes the way they think about God. No longer do they call him “the Lord whom I learned about in books and talks” but instead “the Lord who met me and helped me with his grace.”