Sermon Blog
Jeremiah, a Lesson for the Disappointed
March 13, 2026
For all those who have been disappointed by life, you are in good company: In the end, the world disappoints us all. In turn, we avoid facing the sadness that accompanies us by looking for distractions and comforts wherever we can find them. In “Jeremiah, a Lesson for the Disappointed,” St. John Henry Newman urges his listeners to accept this disappointment as the lot of being human and to embrace it as a means to a real happiness forged through the cross.
Though our lives begin with high hopes, hopes of limitless, new and exciting experiences and of achieving our dreams, they end unfulfilled. “Even in the quietest walks of life,” Newman says, “do not the old feel regret, more or less vividly, that they are not young? Do not they lament the days gone by, and even with the pleasure of remembrance feel the pain?” Even in the beginning of the Christian life, it feels as though we will go on getting stronger and more capable, ever conquering, ever gaining new territories for Christ.
But the course of life is otherwise, and the examples of Scripture, especially of Jeremiah and Christ, suggest that the road to happiness runs through suffering. Jeremiah’s ministry began auspiciously at a young age when God called him to speak in His Name. As Jeremiah took up his mantle, the latest king of Judah was Josiah, a holy man of God. “There seemed, then, every reason for Jeremiah at first to suppose that bright fortunes were in store for the Church,” Newman says. But when Josiah died young, Jeremiah’s fortunes changed quickly. He was persecuted, beaten and imprisoned in a dungeon. He does not hide his feelings, asking God why the wicked are permitted to prosper and where God is and why He doesn’t save him.
But then a change came over Jeremiah that Newman describes as resignation: “I call resignation a more blessed frame of mind than sanguine hope of present success, because it is the truer, and the more consistent with our fallen state of being, and the more improving to our hearts; and because it is that for which the most eminent servants of God have been conspicuous.” The saints of God who have arrived at this stage of resignation have given up on their own accomplishments. They are satisfied with doing what God has asked of them, for “the time for reaping what we have sown is hereafter, not here; that here there is no great visible fruit in any one man’s lifetime.”
This holy resignation is not despair. Far from it. In accepting that this world cannot satisfy us, we hope in the next. During Lent, we are specially disposed to understand this, that we must lose our lives in order to save them. We too can wear a crown of glory, but not without enduring the cross. The practices of Lent are meant to help us form a way of life that resists attachment to the things of this world: “We are not walking with Our Lord unless we are spontaneously depriving ourselves of many things that our whims, vanity, pleasure or self-interest clamour for. Not a single day should pass that has not been seasoned with the salt and grace of mortification; and, please get rid of the idea that you would then be miserable. What a sad little happiness you will have if you don’t learn to overcome yourself, if you let your passions and fancies dominate and crush you, instead of courageously taking up your cross!”
When we resign ourselves to the disappointments of this life, and when we choose to mortify ourselves, true joy can begin to rise up within us. Newman urges, “Give your hearts to Him, and you will for yourselves solve the difficulty, how Christians can be sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”
We, who are saints in progress, must look to Jeremiah and to all the saints before us, like St. John Henry Newman and many others, whose lives are examples to us. None of them were given a red carpet leading to heaven; in fact, many of them suffered far worse than we can imagine. To them we can also pray, asking for their assistance in giving Our Lord our whole hearts and gaining true happiness in His Sacred Heart.
