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Diebus Saltem Dominicis – 9th Sunday after Pentecost: Jesus weeps

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The 20th century commentator Pius Parsch remarks in The Church’s Year of Grace, that the Sundays after Pentecost could be divided into three groups.  The first group stresses the Lord’s miraculous healings which point to, ultimately, the saving of souls.  The second, from the 7th to 14th Sundays, emphasizes the kingdom of God versus the kingdom of the world.  The third, from the 15th to the end of the liturgical year, underscores the Parousia, the 2nd Coming.  He mentions that there are other approaches as well, such as a division according to the theological virtues.  Truly, the treasury of Holy Church’s sacred worship contains inexhaustible wealth.

This Sunday, the 9th after Pentecost, we have the startling image of the Lord weeping.  As Passover was coming up, Jesus stayed a while in Bethany, about an hour from Jerusalem, with Mary, Martha and Lazarus, whom a few weeks before he had raised from the tomb.  On that first Palm Sunday, as he processed to Jerusalem, He wept as He gazed at the city and its Temple from across the valley, knowing the “hell” that would visit them in a few short years.

Fulton Sheen in his Life of Christ wrote that, because He willed to share the sorrows of those whom He came to save, Christ wept three times.  Each time the Greek verb is klaío, which Sheen says, “implies a calm shedding of tears”.  I’m not quite sure where Sheen got that idea about klaío.  However, it stands to reason since the Lord would not ever have lost even the slightest control over His emotions.  Nor would the Blessed Virgin even at the foot of the Cross.

On that Palm Sunday Jesus went to the Temple.  Surely people thought that he was going to take His role as the Davidic priest-king.  There He found the Courtyard of the Gentiles encroached with vendors of sacrificial animals and with moneychangers.  Coins with images couldn’t be used for sacrifices, so they had to be exchanged.  With a whip of cords the Lord drove them out, one of His motives being that the Gentiles were left with no place to worship the one true God.  Commenting on this dramatic moment, St. Jerome (+420) remarked that this was perhaps the Lord’s greatest miracle, considering their numbers and the way enemies were arrayed against Him.  St. Jerome opined that something of His divine authority must have shined forth in that moment which could not be withstood.

To me, among all the other [miracles], it seems more wonderful that, as one Man, and He at the time contemptible and so vile as to be subsequently crucified, with the Scribes and Pharisees raging against Him, and seeing their gains destroyed, He could by the stripes of His single scourge cast out so great a multitude, overthrow the tables, break the seats, and do other things, which a whole army could not have done. For something of fire and of the sidereal flashed from His eyes, and the majesty of His Divinity shone in His face.

St. Gregory the Great (+604) in Sermon 39 preached about this very Gospel passage on a Sunday in the Lateran Basilica – yes, we’ve been reading it at Mass for a long time – draws a direct line from His predicting the destruction of the Temple and then His cleansing of the Temple which the priests had allowed to be so poorly served.

Qui enim narravit mala ventura, et protinus templum ingressus est, ut de illo vendentes et ementes eiiceret, profecto innutuit, quia ruina populi maxime ex culpa sacerdotes fuit…. He therefore predicted future evils and immediately entered the temple to chase away those who sold and bought, thereby showing that the blame for the ruin of a people should be attributed above all to the priests. He predicted destruction but struck those who sold and bought in the temple, showing with this intervention where the cause of the ruin came from. As appears from the testimony of another evangelist, doves were sold in the temple, which symbolize the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Lord therefore chased away those who sold and bought, thus condemning those who carry out the rite of the laying on of hands for payment or even those who try to buy the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Bad priests.  Disarray in churches.

There comes to mind the fate of those who would bargain for, connive with others for, do deals in the sacred spaces to bring to high office in the Church those who don’t belong in such places.

However, we all can take a lesson from this dramatic moment of Christ’s purging anger.  When the Ark of the Covenant was in the tent of meeting and in the first Temple, the Presence of God was there discerned, the shekinah or glory cloud.  With the disappearance of the Ark, the rebuilt Second Temple had never had the presence of God… until Jesus came to it.  The Temple, however, always remained a symbol of God’s presence.  Thus, it can also be for us an image of our own soul, which after Baptism is to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, the dwelling place of God Himself.

How beautiful is the Christian soul in the state of grace!  The careful, prudent, and zealous soul strives to adorn that soul with all the cardinal virtues, with works of mercy, with study, enrichment of the fides quae creditur which seeks understanding.

Yet through negligence the temple of our soul can become a spelunca latronum… a den of thieves rather than a domus orationis… a house of prayer.

No merits come from the deeds and prayers of the soul in the state of mortal sin.  We need in a thorough, brutally honest examination of conscience the prevenient whip of grace-cords to bring us back to our senses and to clean up our temple in the Sacrament of Penance and then meritorious action.  As Bl. Ildefonso Schuster puts it, St. Gregory in his sermon:

compared the distress of the beleaguered city of Jerusalem to that of the soul, which, surrounded by evil spirits, struggles with death and is already at the threshold of eternity.  Though Jesus, at the last supper, could say, “The prince of this world cometh, but hath nothing in me” (John xiv. 30), yet all the saints have trembled at the thought of that supreme hour.  The surest way of preparing ourselves for death is the constant practice of good works, so that our adversary may not be able to boast of any hold over us.

Let us all take this to heart, given how the Lord wept over the fate of the Temple and the people, knowing what “hell” would be inflicted by the Romans, a warning to us who will not take to heart what St. Paul taught in the Epistle reading for this Sunday from 1 Cor 10:6-13.  Paul reminds us first of moments in the Exodus when the people went astray in idolatry and in grumbling.  They were taken down by the “destroyer” as a warning “for our instruction (v.11).  Paul continues:

Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

Christ weeps over our sins as He wept for the sins that would bring destruction to the holy city.  Nevertheless, such is the love of God for each of us that He never leaves us alone in the struggle against temptations and in our sufferings.  He knows them and will, until our final heartbeats, be with us provided we keep our heart-temple open and clean.

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