"through the forebearance of God"

Along with everything else, I am also re-reading the book of the prophet Jeremiah. How easy it is to forget the timeless value of God's prophets, who speak as clearly to us today as they did to those to whom they were initially called to prophesy. As I mentioned in a recent post, over the past few years I have taken to reading devotionally from the King James Version of the Bible, the version I am using to make my way through Jeremiah. So, on this Friday, which is a day of penance, these words from the sixth chapter (verses 26-30) seem appropriate, especially when paired with the verses from the third chapter of Romans I posted below:

O daughter of my people, gird thee with sackcloth, and wallow thyself in ashes: make thee mourning, as for an only son, most bitter lamentation: for the spoiler shall suddenly come upon us. I have set thee for a tower and a fortress among my people, that thou mayest know and try their way. They are all grievous revolters, walking with slanders: they are brass and iron; they are all corrupters. The bellows are burned, the lead is consumed of the fire; the founder melteth in vain: for the wicked are not plucked away. Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the LORD hath rejected them.

Ancient Israel being taken captive

In its Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum), the Second Vatican Council taught that "God, the inspirer and author of both Testaments, wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New. For, though Christ established the new covenant in His blood (see Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25), still the books of the Old Testament with all their parts, caught up into the proclamation of the Gospel, acquire and show forth their full meaning in the New Testament (see Matt. 5:17; Luke 24:27; Rom. 16:25-26; 2 Cor. 14:16) and in turn shed light on it and explain it" (par. 16).

Therefore, it helps us to put things into perspective when we realize that, ultimately, God poured all the wrath Jeremiah spoke about onto His Christ- Jesus, His beloved Son (see also John 3:16):

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.(verses 23-26)