Word to the Wise
Thursday, November 19, 2009 - Thursday in the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
[1 Maccabees 2:15-29 and 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......" [Luke]
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......" [Luke] Back in 1988 I had the privilege of traveling with my father and a group of other pilgrims to the Holy Land. One of the "side trips" we took was to the famous rock monolith known as Masada, where Herod the Great had built a villa against the day he might have to flee from his enemies! It wasn't Herod, however, who used it that way. The Jewish revolt of 66-70AD ended with the revolutionaries making a last suicide-ending stand on top of that rock. What is of interest from the top are the ruins of the Roman camps and ramps! Jesus' description of the siege of Jerusalem is one of the standard ways of conducting a siege dating from well before the Roman days, except that the Romans were superb engineers and literally reduced Jerusalem to rubble and built another city on top of it! (When they got to the top of Masada, they found only corpses - victims of mass suicide.) Although the timing of the Gospel of Luke probably reflects what actually happened to Jerusalem in 70AD, it builds on Jesus' sorrowful prediction. If Jerusalem would accept him as "king" there would be no reason to stage a political/military revolt against the Romans. However, the combined efforts of the Jewish leadership and the Romans, neither of whom had any intention of accepting Jesus as "king" in any sense of the word, resulted in the ignominious death of Jesus, with the Roman bit of sarcasm on the note at the top! The irony of it all is that Jesus did not have to destroy the temple, the Romans did it. Christianity survived by moving beyond its Jewish roots to the Gentile nations, including Rome!!!! Time and again the Church has seemed to be surrounded on all sides by its enemies and has survived. All efforts to stamp out Christianity (and Judaism - and most of the world's "mass religions") have been futile. Is God trying to teach a lesson to those who think they are powerful enough to destroy faith? AMEN
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