Wednesday in the 34th Week of Ordinary Time, November 26, 2025

Luke 21, 12-19

Jesus said to the crowd: “They will seize and persecute you, they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons, and they will have you led before kings and governors because of my name. It will lead to your giving testimony. Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand, for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute. You will even be handed over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends, and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but not a hair on your head will be destroyed. By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”

 There is a certain solemn tenderness in Christ’s voice when he speaks about persecution. He does not thunder; He does not threaten. Instead, he opens his disciples’ eyes to the truth of what it means to follow him in a world that resists grace. The scene in Luke’s Gospel comes just after Jesus has praised the widow who gave all she had — a moment of pure and beautiful surrender. Immediately after that small, luminous story, Jesus turns to the coming trials. It is as though he is saying: “Do not be afraid when the world does not understand you. You belong to me, and I see everything.”

The Lord begins with plain honesty: “They will seize and persecute you.” There is no romantic gloss here. The Christian life is not an escape from trouble, nor a hiding place from conflict. It is a road that eventually brings the disciple into the places where the world most resists God. From the earliest Apostles to the quiet believers of our own day, anyone who seriously tries to live the Gospel will collide with the interior and exterior forces that push against the light. Even those who have never faced open persecution know this in a quieter way: the pressure to remain silent, to avoid speaking the name of Christ, to soften our witness for fear of being judged, dismissed, or excluded.

Yet Jesus sees further than the fear, and he interprets the suffering through the lens of God’s purposes: “It will lead to your giving testimony.” What looks like disaster becomes mission. What appears as accusation becomes proclamation. The world thinks it is silencing the Church, but in God’s plan, the very moment of pressure becomes the moment of witness. In the Acts of the Apostles, prison doors open, governors hear the Gospel, and hearts are converted not despite suffering but through it.

And then Jesus gives one of the most astonishing promises in the Gospel: “You are not to prepare your defense beforehand.” This does not mean Christians should be careless or uninformed, but rather that when the crucial moment comes, our safety does not lie in rhetorical skill or clever reasoning. Our security lies in the Lord himself. We forget how near he is — how present, how intimately involved in the life of the believer. He is not merely watching from heaven; he is speaking through his disciples with his own voice: “I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking.” This is not just assistance. It is participation. Christ speaks in his martyrs. Christ breathes in his confessors. Christ strengthens those who stand in his name.

And yet Jesus does not hide the human cost. Some, he says, will be betrayed by their own families. Some will be put to death. The Gospel does not spare us from the painful truth that love for Christ can divide even households, not because Christ desires division, but because human hearts are free either to welcome or reject his grace. The cost of discipleship can cut into the closest bonds. But even here, Jesus speaks with the tenderness of One who knows suffering from the inside. He himself was betrayed, abandoned, denied, and finally killed. He never asks of His disciples anything he was unwilling to bear first.

Then comes the mystery: “You will be hated by all because of my name, but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.” How can both be true? Christians have indeed lost their lives for Christ. So what does Jesus mean? He means that the world can wound the body, but it cannot touch the soul surrendered to God. It can take life, but not destroy it. The disciple’s life is ultimately held in the hands of the Father. Even death — the last and deepest fear — becomes a door into the kingdom.

Finally, Jesus gives the key to everything He has said: “By your perseverance you will secure your lives.” The Christian vocation is not brilliance, nor popularity, nor worldly success. It is perseverance — steady, faithful endurance in Christ. A heart that holds firm through trials becomes a vessel capable of eternal life. Perseverance does not mean stoic self-reliance. It means remaining in the Lord who remains with us. It is the slow, strong virtue that matures in us through daily fidelity, through steadfast hope, through quiet trust in the God who never abandons his own.

In the end, perseverance is simply the decision to stay near Jesus — in joy and in pain, in clarity and in darkness, in triumph and in apparent defeat. And when we do, He fulfills his promise: not a hair of our head is lost, and our lives are secured in the Heart of the One who has conquered death.

Tuesday in the 34th Week of Ordinary Time, November 25, 2025

Luke 21, 5-11

While some people were speaking about how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings, Jesus said, “All that you see here– the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.”  Then they asked him, “Teacher, when will this happen? And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?” He answered, “See that you not be deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and ‘The time has come.’ Do not follow them! When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for such things must happen first, but it will not immediately be the end.” Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place; and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.”

I’m sorry about posting this reflection late. I had two hospital emergencies last night including one that came after midnight.

According to Jewish expectations of the time, the Messiah, whose arrival was due any time, would be born of the House of David, purify the worship in the Temple, and wage a war of independence against the Romans.  He would then rule Israel for a thousand years, after which there would be the resurrection of the dead and a great judgment.  The Lord’s words to the Apostles, “All that you see here– the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down”, would have shocked them.  He was telling them that everything they had been raised to believe about the future of Israel was false.  This came harder to them because they believed firmly that he was the promised Messiah.  If anyone would know the future of Israel, he would.  They must have been crushed, and minutes may have passed before they could speak.  This is how we are to hear their muted questions to him, “Teacher, when will this happen? And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?”  Though this went against what they always been told, they believed him.  But they were struggling.  

“See that you not be deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and ‘The time has come.’ Do not follow them!”  We are reading these words with hindsight: when he says this, we are thinking about the Lord’s return in glory.  But he had not taught his Apostles that he would come again, to this point.  He had taught them that he would be arrested, beaten, killed, and that after his Death he would rise, but not yet that he would return in judgment.  He would do this a little later in his discourse.  But what would his words have meant to the Apostles just then?  He was telling them that they were to accept no one outside their company as speaking on his behalf.  (For us today, this means to accept no claims from outside the Church about the Lord coming).  The Lord tells them, in addition: “When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for such things must happen first, but it will not immediately be the end.”  The expected war against the Romans was thought to come at the beginning of the Messianic age, but when Jerusalem rose up (as it did in 66 A.D.) they were not to think this signaled his return.

“Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place; and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.”  All of these events have taken place regularly since the creation on the human race, except for the mighty signs that “will come from the sky”.  Wars and plagues do not signify his immediate coming back to the earth but signify that sin and its effects will continue to build up, requiring a judgment.  We can also understand the natural catastrophes of which the Lord speaks as the signs of the world continuing its “passing away”: “Heaven and earth will pass away” (Matthew 24, 35), and: “The first heaven and the first earth was gone: and the sea is now no more” (Revelation 22, 1).

The Lord teaches us that “we have not here a lasting city: but we seek one that is to come” (Hebrews 13, 14).  With whatever time we have left we ought to make ourselves ready for our migration to heaven.

Monday in the 34th Week of Ordinary Time, November 24, 2025

Luke 21, 1-4

When Jesus looked up he saw some wealthy people putting their offerings into the treasury and he noticed a poor widow putting in two small coins. He said, “I tell you truly, this poor widow put in more than all the rest; for those others have all made offerings from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole livelihood.”

In this brief and luminous scene from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus reveals something that overturns every human measure of value. He is sitting in the Temple, a place built to honor God, watching how people honor God in practice. The wealthy come forward and deposit generous offerings — coins that clatter, sparkle, and impress. Then a widow approaches quietly, unseen by others, holding in her hand two tiny copper coins — a sum so small it is almost an embarrassment. She drops them in. No one notices. Except Jesus.

And what Jesus sees is the very heart of the Father.

He says that this widow has given more than all the others. Not more coins, not more purchasing power, not more institutional support—more in the eyes of God. Why? Because her gift contains the whole of herself. “Those others have all made offerings from their surplus wealth,” Jesus says, “but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole livelihood.” Her entire life, distilled into two small coins, becomes an offering that outweighs the gold of kings.

This passage reveals first that God’s measure is not quantity but interior weight. God peers into the soul, not the purse. The rich give without feeling the gift; the widow feels the full weight of it. The currency God receives is love, trust, surrender, and willingness. Her coins shimmer with all four.

But even more deeply, this widow shows us the shape of Christ’s own heart. She anticipates His Passion. Like her, he will soon give “all His livelihood” — his very life —in a moment that looks insignificant and even shameful to the world, yet stands as the greatest act of love in human history. In her small and hidden offering, he sees a reflection of his total self-giving that will redeem the world.

And so the Lord Jesus gathers his disciples close and says, “Look at her.” The disciples had just been marveling at the grandeur of the Temple stones — its architecture, its permanence, its splendor. But Jesus points their gaze to one trembling act of trust from a woman no one notices. Her offering is the true cornerstone, precious in his sight. Her poverty, freely surrendered, is the foundation upon which God builds his Kingdom.

This story invites each of us to ask: What coins are in my hand? Not what gifts I possess, but what I cling to. What fears hold me back. What I am reluctant to surrender because it feels too small, too fragile, too necessary to my survival.

The widow had nothing — but she held nothing back.

That is why her offering explodes with divine power. A person who gives from surplus gives something; a person who gives from poverty gives themselves. And that is the gift God can transform.

Christ is not asking us to impoverish ourselves in reckless ways, but he is asking for the corner of our heart where we keep our last two coins — the part we prefer to keep for ourselves: the last reserve of security, the guarded fear, the hidden wound. When we place that in his hands — even tremblingly — we discover that we lose nothing and gain everything.

The widow’s gift is not a lesson in fundraising. It is a revelation of the Gospel. God looks not at the size of the gift, but at the surrender it represents. In heaven’s economy, two small coins freely given outweigh a treasury of gold given with indifference.

And so Jesus calls us gently to step forward like her: quietly, humbly, offering whatever is ours to give — our love, our patience, our trust, our time, our sufferings, our poverty, our hope. When offered to him, they become infinitely precious.

For when we give him our heart, even in its littleness, he gives us his own infinite love in return.

The Solemnity of Christ the King, November 23, 2025

Luke 23, 35–43

The rulers sneered at Jesus and said, “He saved others, let him save himself if he is the chosen one, the Christ of God.” Even the soldiers jeered at him. As they approached to offer him wine they called out, “If you are King of the Jews, save yourself.” Above him there was an inscription that read, “This is the King of the Jews.”   Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us.” The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

The Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, is set on the last Sunday of the Church year.  In this way, the feast day looks forward to the new year, and back on the year about to be completed.  Thus, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is signified as on a throne that overlooks all time and all space.

The way to understand the kingship of the Lord Jesus is the same as it is to understand the Father’s fatherhood.  Jesus is THE King, as the Father is THE Father.  Those to whom kingship or fatherhood pertain only share in the Kingship of Christ or the Fatherhood of God the Father.  Jesus is not like other kings; to one extent or another they are like him.  We should, then, be prepared to see that Jesus as King far surpasses others who are kings.  Jesus, the King of the universe, possesses supreme authority so as to be the supreme servant,  As he himself said, “Even as the Son of Man is not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a redemption for many.”  

“If you are King of the Jews, save yourself.”  The Lord revealed himself as the King of the universe when he reigned from the throne of the Cross.  He came to earth precisely in order to lay down his life for us.  He had, quite literally, lived for this.  While the soldiers and Jewish leaders jeer at him with a title he never claimed for himself, he is the One who does not need to be redeemed, for he is God.  They also say that “He saved others” as though this work was done.  In fact, it was only beginning.  (By the way, one of the odder aspects of the mockery of the Jewish leaders is that they admit freely that Jesus did save others from their diseases and from demons, and yet they worked for his crucifixion to make him stop saving others.  It never dawns on them that if he did possess the power to save others he could save himself, but his choosing not to do so pointed to his having some greater purpose in dying).

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  This pray by the Good Thief reveals real understanding of who Jesus was.  Rejecting the idea of the Lord ruling an earthly kingdom, as the Pharisees imagined the Messiah would do, he appeals to Jesus as the King of a heavenly realm.  Not even the Apostles had shown this level of understanding.  We must suppose that as the Father had revealed the divine Sonship of Christ to St. Peter (cf. Matthew 16, 17), the Father had revealed this to the Good Thief.  The Good Thief, in agony and struggling to draw breath, prayed to Jesus, acknowledging him as his King, and the Lord made a promise we each hope one day to hear: “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”  We will hear this, too, if we acknowledge Jesus as our King and live by his commandments and according to his will.

Saturday in the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, November 22, 2025

Luke 20, 27-40

Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us, “If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother.”  Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless. Then the second and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.” Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise. That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” Some of the scribes said in reply, “Teacher, you have answered well.” And they no longer dared to ask him anything.

A bit of news before the reflection: The U.S. bishops have given the thumbs up to a new version (apparently a revision of the New American Bible translation) of the Holy Bible that will be used for the Mass readings, the readings for the celebration of the sacraments and for funerals, and for the Liturgy of the Hours (the Breviary). It is said to be published for use in 2027. I have not seen the text and so cannot comment on it. This version will allow for the same biblical text to be used at Mass as we can read in private at home with our Bibles. Currently, of course, the readings in the Lectionary differ from what we find in the New American Bible. 

Now, the reflection on the Gospel reading for today’s Mass:

The Lord performed great wonders while he walked the earth.  He gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf.  He cast out demons that had long infested people.  He fed thousands from a basket of fish and bread.  And he raised the dead.  All these he did in public.  They deeply impressed the people who saw them.  Even those who opposed him could not deny what he did, but attributed his power to the devil.  But you and I did not see them.  As we read testimony by eyewitnesses in the Gospel, we can be moved and astonished, but the effect is not the same as it would be if we had seen these miracles ourselves.  On the other hand, we can read his words, and even without the sound and force of his voice behind them, and even in translation, they can shake us and awe us.  Simply from reading his words we can know deep within ourselves that this is God speaking.  The Gospel reading for today’s Mass is a very good example of this.

“Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus.”  The Lord has entered Jerusalem and is teaching in the Temple precincts.  The people are “hanging” on his words, as we know from Luke 19, 48.  The Sadducees, a relatively small sect which had assumed the operation of the Temple, despised the Lord for teaching about the resurrection.  They see this doctrine as a heresy and vigorously resist the Pharisees, who also teach it.  Their animosity was so heated on this teaching that riots brokeout over it (cf. Acts 23, 6-9).  They attempt here to discredit Jesus as a teacher by proposing to him a legal riddle.  They preface their riddle by quoting Moses: “If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother” (cf. Deuteronomy 25, 5-6).  They then describe a situation governed by this injunction: “There were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless. Then the second and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless.”  The Sadducees must have felt very clever at this point.  They next spring their trap, as they thought it to be: “Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be?”  

The Lord’s answer must have stunned them.  “The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.”  He gives an authoritative answer that goes beyond the Scriptures, telling them what no one but God and the angels could know.  He also throws the crude, materialist vision of heaven the Sadducees had back in their faces.  The majesty of what the Lord has revealed simply makes ridiculous what the Sadducees offer.  The Lord does not stop to allow them either to sneak away or to try to regroup: “They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.”  His words blow out the smoke of false teaching so that all who hear him can revel in the light he brings.  The Lord does not merely and with ease destroy the teaching of the Sadducees, but reveals to the people something about the life in heaven that is beautiful, sensible, wise, and convincing.

But the Lord is not done yet.  He reveals something of the life of God: “That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  The Sadducees did not accept the works of the Prophets into their Scriptures but held only the Pentateuch, or Torah, as the inspired word of God.  Thus, the Lord does not quote from the Prophets with them, but from the books which they did accept.  Even Moses, he tells them, believed in the resurrection of the dead.  How do we know this? Because “he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”  We must note the present tense of the verb: He is the God of Abraham, not, He was.  That is, Abraham still lives and awaits the resurrection, as does Isaac and Jacob.  God is still the God of Abraham, after all these centuries, he says, and this can only be because Abraham, though dead, yet is alive.  Nor did Almighty God cast off Abraham and the other Patriarchs after they died so that they wander among the deep shadows of Sheol, but he remains their God after their life on earth as much as he had always been.

The Lord’s words shine with brilliance and simplicity.  They make us think, when their truth dawns on us, that only God could have said this and spoken in this way.  We fall to our knees in wonder, “Never did any man speak like this man” (John 7, 46). 

Friday in the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, November 21, 2025

The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Temple

Luke 19:45-48

Jesus entered the temple area and proceeded to drive out those who were selling things, saying to them, “It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.” And every day he was teaching in the temple area. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people, meanwhile, were seeking to put him to death, but they could find no way to accomplish their purpose because all the people were hanging on his words.

According to the Gospels, Jesus went straight to the Temple once he entered Jerusalem at the beginning of his last week on earth.  His followers would have expected this, for in their understanding the Messiah was to purge the Temple and restore true worship, and then to declare that the kingdom of Israel was restored with himself at its head.  Thus, the anxiety of the Pharisees in Luke 19, 39.  Going to the Temple and expelling the merchants doing business in the courtyard seemed exactly what the Messiah was supposed to do.  In fact, his actions meant that the worship in the Temple with its animal sacrifices had served its purpose as a sign and had now come to an end: the true worship of God with its offering to the Father of his Body and Blood, was about to be inaugurated.

“It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’, but you have made it a den of thieves.”  The Lord quotes from Isaiah 56, 7.  The whole verse runs: “I will bring them [the faithful Jews] into my holy mount, and will make them joyful in my house of prayer: their holocausts, and their victims shall please me upon my altar: for my house shall be called the house of prayer, for all nations.”  Almighty God promises to give joy to those who obey his Commandments in his house of prayer.  His glory will be their glory.  He says that their sacrifices will please him.  The dead animals offered up at that time represented the one making the offering, and so “a sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit: a contrite and humbled heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51, 19).  That is, a heart emptied of its pride, and a will conformed to the will of God.  

Jesus particularly declares the Temple God’s “house of prayer” in opposing the merchants, contrasting it with the “den of thieves” the merchants and their backers, the Sanhedrin, had made it.  A den of thieves is a dangerous place for any person to go.  Because it is hidden, a person could walk into it unwary, realizing his mistake only when it was too late.  In this den, within the rocky hills of Judea, all sorts of evil would be planned, and in this hideout the bandits felt safe.  Here also they would divide their loot and celebrate their successes.  The Lord is declaring that this is what the Temple had become, with the Sanhedrin and Pharisees as the thieves.  It is as if they lured the innocent believers into their den in order to rob and kill them.  That is, they take their money and endanger their souls with false teachings that draw them away from God.

“And every day he was teaching in the temple area.”  The Lord began to cast out the teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees with his teaching that enthralled crowds who had thirsted all their lives for the truth about God.  “The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people, meanwhile, were seeking to put him to death.”  These thieves could not abide a single challenge and so banded together to find the best way to eliminate the One who showed them for who they were.  “But they could find no way to accomplish their purpose because all the people were hanging on his words.”  Out of desperation they would finally try to use the hated procurator Pilate to do their work for them.  But what was this teaching that so inflamed them?  Was this man from Nazareth preaching a war with Rome and announcing that he was a king?  No, rather, he taught the people to love God with all their hearts and their neighbors as themselves. Instead of inciting his followers, he was calming them.

“All the people were hanging on his words.”  They clung to his words as though they were jewels — or the ropes of rescue ships.  His words were life to them.  Perhaps many still expected him to restore the kingdom, but all his words were about God.  

The freer from sin we are and the more prayerful, the more we will hang on his words, too, for it will seem to us as we read them that we are hearing him speak them to us.  So let us cast out the vices from us, his temples, and become ourselves true houses of prayer. We can do this through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, herself a perfect house of prayer who prepared herself to do God’s will even as a child, living and learning about her Master in his Temple.

Thursday in the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, November 20, 2025

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 Gospels tell us of only two times the Lord Jesus wept: at the death of his friend Lazarus, and here.  This tells us of how personally he took his rejection by the people he had shown the most love for, over the centuries.  Time and again he had sent them prophets and judges to sway them and lead them when they forsook the simple Commandments he had given them.  They cast him aside in the wilderness for a golden calf after he had sent ten mighty plagues against Egypt on their account and led them across the Red Sea to safety out of reach of Pharaoh’s chariots.  They grumbled against him after he had miraculously fed them there, where no other food was to be found.  They gave him up for the worship of alien gods after he had incredibly handed over to them the land of Canaan in which to dwell.  They signaled their lack of trust in him by demanding a king even during the time of Samuel, their greatest judge.  Later, they clung to their idolatry despite the warnings of the prophets of national destruction if they persisted in it.  And, finally, it had come to this, that a few days after the Som of God wept over them, they would cry out against him, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” in the face of the Roman procurator’s wish to let him go free (cf. Luke 23, 21-22).

In the Lord’s words read at today’s Mass, we see the horror of sin and the dreadful fate of the one who clings to it.

“If this day you only knew what makes for peace.”  Jerusalem, that is, the unrepentant soul, does know what makes for peace.  Through the Prophet Micah, the Lord has said, “I will show you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Verily to do judgment, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6, 8).  And here, God had come to walk humbly with his people, showing them with his own actions, which everyone could see, how to do judgment and to love mercy. But still they did not “know” this in their own actions.  They were like children who watched but did not apply what they saw to themselves.  “But now it is hidden from your eyes.”  The love of their God was hidden from the eyes of the hearts of the unrepentant, that is, they hide themselves from it, “That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them” (Mark 4, 12), as the Lord said, adapting Isaiah 44, 18.  They hide themselves from his love so that they can avoid the hard work of admitting their sins, begging forgiveness, doing penance, and changing their lives.

“For the days are coming upon you when your enemies will raise a palisade against you.”  The coming end of our lives is like an army assembling before the walls of a city and erecting siege-works.  We know we are getting older and weaker, that our formerly robust strength is failing us.  From the walls of our city we can see the enemy, out of range from our own weapons, calmly, methodically, preparing for our destruction.  The unrepentant see, but do nothing else.  “They will encircle you and hem you in on all sides.”  Every avenue of escape — to repent — has been closed off for them, and they do nothing but sit, waiting for their doom.  “They will smash you to the ground and your children within you.” That is, the unrepentant sinner and any hope he had of living his accustomed life. “They will not leave one stone upon another within you.”  No chance of respite or recovery will remain.  

“Because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”  The time of our visitation, of God’s grace, is now.  The history of the world is filled with the stories of men and women of every time and condition who could have saved themselves from some terrible fate, but did not lift a finger to do so, in spite of repeated warnings.  We have the urgings of the Son of God himself, and whatever time left he grants us.  We pray for our own conversion and for that of even the most abandoned sinners.