Thursday in the 28th Week of Ordinary Time, October 17, 2024

Luke 11, 47-54

The Lord said: “Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets whom your fathers killed. Consequently, you bear witness and give consent to the deeds of your ancestors, for they killed them and you do the building. Therefore, the wisdom of God said, ‘I will send to them prophets and Apostles; some of them they will kill and persecute’ in order that this generation might be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who died between the altar and the temple building. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be charged with their blood! Woe to you, scholars of the law! You have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter.” When Jesus left, the scribes and Pharisees began to act with hostility toward him and to interrogate him about many things, for they were plotting to catch him at something he might say.

A tomb was cut into the rock on the side of the Mount of Olives.  To enter it, a person descends a staircase also cut from the rock.  The burial chamber itself contained thirty-eight niches where the remains of the deceased were laid.  According to custom, once the bodies had sufficiently decayed, the remaining bones would then be placed in a stone jar called an ossuary, and this would be placed in another part of the tomb.  The niche could then be reused.  This particular tomb is called The Tomb of the Prophets, and was the burial place of the three last Jewish Prophets: Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.  They had originally been buried elsewhere in less significant tombs, but the Jews, around the time of Jesus, constructed this new, much grander tomb just outside Jerusalem, and then moved the remains of the Prophets there.  Subsequently, other Jews and, later, Christians, were also buried there.  The site can be visited today.  Also at that time and near Jerusalem there existed the tomb of the Prophet Isaiah (now part of a mosque) and that of Jeremiah.  These tombs are the “memorials” of the Prophets which Jesus mentions in today’s Gospel Reading.

“Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets whom your fathers killed.”  The Lord does not condemn the construction of these tombs but rather the identity of those who were financing and carrying out their construction, for although they themselves had not killed the Prophets, they bore witness and gave consent to the deeds of their ancestors.  They did this through their refusal to denounce their ancestors for their crimes and to build the tombs not out of remorse and grief but out of family pride.  In fact, they wanted both to be known as belonging to the illustrious families of old, who had killed the Prophets, but also as those who honored in death these same Prophets.  The Lord Jesus shows that the killing and the building of the tombs is practically the same action: “They killed them and you do the building.”  They do not go about in torn clothing and covered with ashes, but with their heads held high.

“I will send to them Prophets and Apostles.”  Even knowing that the murderers of the Prophets and their descendants would kill all the Prophets and Apostles sent to them, God continues to send them so that either they would convert or that they could not complain on the day of judgment that they had not been accorded enough chances to convert.  The Lord Jesus shows that the Father does this in the Parable of the Wedding Feast: “Again he sent other servants, more than the former; and they did to them in like manner” (Matthew 21, 36).  Jesus shows that he does this as well in all the opportunities given to Judas at the Last Supper and even in the Garden of Gethsemane to repent.

“Yes, I tell you.”  The Lord Jesus makes a solemn declaration with these words: this indeed will happen. “This generation will be charged with their blood!”  The Lord charges these builders of the tombs of the Prophets with the murders committed by their fathers because they did not repudiate their crimes.  To be fair, the Lord demands that they essentially cut themselves off from their heritage in doing this, but, by far, “it is better for you that one of thy bodily members should perish, rather than your whole body be cast into hell” (Matthew 5, 29).   The Lord teaches us to hate evil no matter who commits it and to have nothing to do with it, whatever we must do.  

“The scribes and Pharisees began to act with hostility toward him and to interrogate him about many things, for they were plotting to catch him at something he might say.”  The scribes and Pharisees cannot endure the idea that they must repent of anything and so they attack the one who points out their sins and tells them what they already knew, that those with sin cannot be saved.  In the end, their pride would keep them out of heaven.