Thursday in the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, November 23, 2023

Luke 19, 41-44

As Jesus drew near Jerusalem, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If this day you only knew what makes for peace– but now it is hidden from your eyes. For the days are coming upon you when your enemies will raise a palisade against you; they will encircle you and hem you in on all sides. They will smash you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another within you because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”

The Scriptures tell us of only two occasions in the Lord’s life in which he wept: at the time of the death of Lazarus, and here.  In the first case, he wept, mourning over the sin of Adam and Eve by which death entered the world and brought so much grief and pain with it.  In the second case, he wept that the human race had continued and would continue to choose sin, which brings death — not only the death of the body but of the soul.

“He saw the city and wept over it.”  Normally, the one who made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem rejoiced upon finally seeing it.  Here, the Lord weeps in sorrow.  “If this day you only knew what makes for peace– but now it is hidden from your eyes.”  St. Matthew shows how the people of the city were so absorbed in their own affairs, concerned only about worldly things, that the arrival of their long-prophesied Savior came as a bad shock.  In Matthew 2, 3 the Evangelist tells of their reaction to the arrival of the Magi who are searching for the new-born King of the Jews: “King Herod hearing this, was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.”  The Greek text has, “thunderstruck”.  And Matthew shows the reaction of the people when the Lord Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph with his crowds of followers: “And when he was come into Jerusalem, the whole city was moved, saying: Who is this?” (Matthew 21, 10).  The Greek word for the verb is better translated as “shaken”, as, “the whole city was shaken.”  The people did not rejoice.  They panicked.  And the Lord wept, for the very people who should have been waiting excitedly for him, did not.  What was it that made for their peace?  The Lord Jesus, the Prince of Peace.  He was “hidden” from their eyes because they were too busy admiring themselves in their mirrors, dismissing out of hand any stains of sin they may have spotted on themselves.  In fact, they hid their eyes from him, thinking that of they did not look, he would go away.  But they could not keep this up: they might try to ignore him, rejecting him, but the consequences of rejecting their Savior would come upon them at last, and they would be “smashed to the ground”.  Jesus seems to link the rejection of him by the Jews with the destruction of Jerusalem some thirty-seven years after his crucifixion and Death.  And so we should see that rejection of the Lord ever results in disaster for those who do reject him: “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved: but he who does not believe shall he condemned” (Mark 16, 16).  That is, he who refuses to believe.

“Because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”  Jerusalem should have recognized the time of her visitation.  The Jews had the prophesies, they could count the number of the generations, and no one preached as Jesus did or perform miracles as he did.  Within a few hours walk of the city he raised a man from the dead.  Within the city he performed breath-taking healings.  He silenced the cleverest of the Pharisees and the Sadducees with his teaching.  And still they did not know, or, if they did, they would not bow to him.

The time of our visitation is this day and every day of our lives.  Let us rejoice that God has sent his Son into the world to redeem us and to lead us into heaven.  “This is the day the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118, 24).

Today Americans celebrate a day of Thanksgiving, calling to mind all the good that we have received in this country.  The first Thanksgiving celebrated by the people of the Plymouth Bay Colony took place hundreds of years ago after the prosperous harvest that followed their first bitter and hungry winter in this land.  Let us who bear the name of Christian be sure to give our thanks to Almighty God for whatever he has given us in his mercy.  Our culture, firmly in the grip of materialism, emphasizes that we should only celebrate ourselves, but we know that without the grace of God, we are nothing.