Woe is me, my mother, that you have borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent for interest, nor men have lent to me for interest; yet everyone of them does curse me.
Read Chapter 15
Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
Jeremiah also bewails his birth in these words: “Woe is me, my mother! Why have you borne me, a man of contention in all the earth? I have not benefited others, nor has anyone benefited me. My strength has failed.” If, then, holy people shrink from life whose life, though profitable to us, they themselves consider unprofitable, what ought we to do who are not able to profit others and who feel that our lives, like money borrowed at interest, grow more heavily weighted every day with an increasing mass of sins? “I die daily,” says the apostle. Better certainly is this saying than those who say that meditation on death is true philosophy, for while they praise the study, he exercises the practice of death. - "On His Brother Satyrus 2.34–35"
Strife. Jeremias was under continual persecution, (Menochius) yet ceased not to reprimand the wicked. (Haydock)
Obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit. (Cicero)
Usury. Such people are exposed to contention. (Menochius)
Such is our life, we whose existence is so transitory. Such is the game we play on earth. We do not exist, and we are born, and being born, we disintegrate and disappear. We are a fleeting dream, an apparition without substance, the flight of a bird that passes, a ship that leaves no trace on the sea. We are dust, a vapor, the morning dew, a flower growing but a moment and withering in a moment. “A person’s days are as grass. As the flower of the field, so shall he flourish,” beautifully, as described by holy David in meditating on our weakness. And again in these words: “Declare to me the fewness of my days.” And he defines the days of people as the measure of a span. What would you say to Jeremiah, who, complaining about his birth, even blames his mother, and that, too, for the failings of others. I have seen all things, says the Preacher, I have reviewed in thought all human things, wealth, pleasure, power, unstable glory, wisdom that evades us rather than is won; then pleasure agai...
This synecdoche can be understood concerning Jeremiah, who shall be judged only in the land of Judea, out of the entire world. He corresponds to the true Lord our Savior, who says in the Gospel: “I have come into this world for judgment, that those who do not see may see and those who see may be blinded,” about whom it was also written: “Behold, this child is set for the ruin and resurrection of many in Israel and for a sign of contradiction.” For which of the philosophers and pagans and who among the heretics does not judge Christ by applying their laws to his birth and suffering and resurrection and substance? Nor is it strange for Christ to be saying, according to the truth of his assumed body, “Woe is me, my mother,” when, in another location, it is obviously a speaker who corresponds to his person who says, “Woe is me, for I have become as one who gathers the stubble at harvest and as a cluster of the vine having no first fruit to eat.” And lest we think that the weakness of these...
