Jeremiah 3:7

Admonition, then, is loving care’s censure and produces understanding. Such is Christ the Educator in his admonitions, as when he says in the Gospel, “How often would I have gathered your children, as a bird gathers her young ones under her wings, and you would not!” And again, the Scripture admonishes, saying, “And they committed adultery with stock and stone and burned incense to Baal.” For it is a very great proof of God’s love that, though knowing well the shamelessness of the people who had kicked and bounded away, he nevertheless exhorts them to repentance. He says by Ezekiel, “Son of man, you dwell in the midst of scorpions. Nevertheless, speak to them, if by chance they will hear.” Further, to Moses he says, “Go and tell Pharaoh to send my people forth, but I know that he will not send them forth.”

This is a new kind of his goodness that even after adultery God nevertheless would receive the soul that returns and repents from the heart as he also says through the prophet, "If a woman leaves her husband and sleeps with another man, shall she return to her husband? Will she not be contaminated? You, however, have committed fornication with your many shepherds and returned to me." He says the same thing elsewhere, "After you committed fornication, with all these, I said, 'Return to me.' And you have not thus returned, says the Lord."

In addition to these things, “when people fall, do they not rise again? If one turns away, does he not return?” Why, then, is the virgin “turned away with a stubborn revolting,” even though she heard Christ, her spouse, saying through Jeremiah, “And when she had committed all these fornications, I said, ‘Return to me, and she did not return’?” “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?” Indeed, many safeguards against evil would you find in the divine Scripture and many remedies which from destruction bring salvation—the mysteries of death and resurrection, the words of the terrible judgment and everlasting punishment, the doctrines of repentance and the forgiveness of sin, those innumerable examples of conversion, the drachma, the sheep, the son who spent his livelihood with harlots, was lost and found, was dead and alive again. Let us use these safeguards against evil. Through them, let us heal our soul.

It is not only bodily sin that is called fornication and adultery, but any sin you have committed, and especially transgression against that which is divine. Perhaps you ask how we can prove this. “They prostituted themselves,” it says “with things they made.” Don’t you see an impudent act of fornication? And again, “They committed adultery with pieces of wood.” Don’t you see a kind of adulterous religion? Do not then commit spiritual adultery, while keeping your bodies chaste.

For the evils we have once perpetrated cannot provoke God so much as our being unwilling to make any change in the future. To sin may be a merely human failing, but to continue in the same sin ceases to be human and becomes altogether devilish. For observe how God by the mouth of his prophet blames this more than the other. “For,” we read, “I said unto her after she had done all these deeds of fornication, return to me, and yet she returned not.” … “Declare you first your iniquities that you may be justified.” Now this he demands from us in order to intensify our love toward him.

He directs his speech to the city, in this way, too, being minded to correct his hearers, and said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!” What is meant by this repetition? This is the manner of one pitying her and gently loving her. She is like a woman who is beloved. He always loved her indeed, yet she has despised him who loved her. Therefore at the point of being punished, he pleads, being now about to inflict the punishment. This he does also in the prophets, using these words, “I said, ‘she will return to me,’ but she did not return.”

These two indeed are chief sins, engendered by violent lusts, the one of sexual desire, the other of the desire of money. Hear what God said to Jerusalem, “I said, after she had committed all these prostitutions, she will return to me, and she did not return.” When we have come back to the earnest love of God, he remembers not the former things. God is not as people. He reproaches us not with the past, neither does he say, when we repent, “Why were you absent for so long a time?” Only let us approach him as we ought. Let us cleave to him earnestly and rivet our hearts to his fear.…How many other such changes would you see, both to have taken place back then and now taking place every day? For this reason I say, “Neither let him on the cross despair, nor let him in the church be confident.” For to this last it is said, “Let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” And to the other, “Shall not he that falls arise?” And, “Lift up the hands that hang down, and the feeble knees.” Again, to these he said, “Watch”; but to those, “Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead.” These need to preserve what they have, and those to become what they are not. These need to preserve their health, those to be delivered from their infirmity, for they are sick. But many even of the sick become healthy, and of the healthy many, in being remiss, get sick.

(Verse 6 and following) And the Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: Have you seen what the adulteress Israel has done? She went upon every high hill and under every leafy tree and committed adultery there. And I said, after she had done all these things: Return to me, but she did not return. And her treacherous sister Judah saw that I had dismissed the adulteress Israel and had given her a bill of divorce. But her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she also went and committed adultery. She defiled the land with her adulterous acts and committed adultery with stone and wood. And in all this, her treacherous sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but in falsehood, says the Lord. The torments of some are the remedies of others. And when a murderer is punished, he receives indeed what he has done, but others are deterred from the crime. Therefore, when the ten tribes, which were called Israel, were captured by the Assyrians and taken to Media, the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, which should have feared similar things and turned their whole minds towards God, overcame the crimes of the ten tribes. And they followed idols to such an extent that they placed a statue of Baal in the Temple of God, which is called an idol by Ezekiel, set up for zeal and emulation of the Lord. But it speaks under the figure of two sisters, because from one are generated Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by the stock, and the former is called the adversary, the latter the rebellious one. For the former completely turned away from God, immediately worshipping golden calves in Dan and Bethel. But the latter, in whose possession was the Temple and the true religion of God, gradually departed from the Lord (3 Kings 12). And for this reason, she is called the rebellious one. According to the spiritual interpretation, prophecy about heretics is this: those who, thinking themselves wise in heretical cunning, ascend the mind of pride with knowledge of a false name; and, defiled by the pleasures of this flesh, expose their fornication under every leafy and pleasant tree. When they are delivered to the devil for the destruction of the flesh, it often happens that the house of Judah, that is, the confession and true faith, is not at all frightened by their example but commits much greater evils. And they contaminate the land of the Church with the ease of their fornication, committing adultery with stone and wood, following the teachings that are against God. But if an ecclesiastical man wishes to correct someone who has gone astray, and to cut away the rotten flesh, and to bring back to repentance those who have followed falsehood: and nonetheless they continue to adhere to the ancient error under the guise of Ecclesiastical truth, it can be said of them: In all these things, her treacherous sister Judah has not turned back to me with her whole heart, but in deceit. But this prophecy was fulfilled during the time of Josiah, a righteous king, under whom Jeremiah began to prophesy.

“And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah has not returned to me with her whole heart, but feignedly.” It is a smaller sin to follow evil that you think is good than not to venture to defend what you know for certain is good. If we cannot endure threats, injustice and poverty, how shall we overcome the flames of Babylon? Let us not lose by hollow peace what we have preserved by war. I should be sorry to allow my fears to teach me faithlessness when Christ has put the true faith in the power of my choice.

It is written in the law: “You shall not commit adultery.” This is rightly observed according to the simple meaning of the letter by one who is still in bondage to foul passions. But by one who has already forsaken these dirty acts and impure affections, it must be observed in the spirit, so that he may forsake not only the worship of idols but also all heathen superstitions and the observance of auguries and omens and all signs and days and times, or at any rate he should not be entangled in the conjectures of words and names that destroy the simplicity of our faith. This is the kind of fornication by which Jerusalem is said to have been corrupted, the fornication “on every high hill and beneath every leafing tree.” The Lord criticized Jerusalem for this through the words of the prophet, “Let them stand and save you, these astrologers who studied the stars and counted the months so as to tell from these what was coming to you.”

Those who place themselves far from your care and choose to serve idols will reap the destructive fruit of defection. He calls idolatry infidelity here. God likewise says also through Jeremiah, “She went up every high hill and under every green tree and was unfaithful there. I said, after all this infidelity of hers, ‘Return unto me,’ and she did not return.” Again, “She committed adultery with tree and stone,” meaning, “Leaving me, her spouse, she served false gods.” Accordingly, here too he called the worship of idols infidelity.