Thursday in the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, November 18, 2021

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.