As we enter into the Advent season, the Church offers us a series of prophetic texts in our first readings. This week we find ourselves in the prophet Jeremiah and we spend most of our episode situating this reading in its historical context, an exercise that proves helpful for understanding the text itself but also for understanding the season of Advent. As the apocalyptic theme continues in our Gospel we find the Church pointing both backward and forward. Understanding the longings of the Jewish people helps us to understand our own longing for Christ.