COMMENT ON THE LITURGY OF THE TENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
Collect
Let thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of thy humble servants; and, that they may obtain their petitions, make them to ask such things as shall please thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Readings
1 Cor 12:1-11; Lc 19:41-47
Comment
The prophecy of the Lord on the destruction of Jerusalem and the weeping of lamentation over it contrasts with the songs of exultation of the crowd, with the entry of Jesus into the city. This is the meaning of the Greek word eklausen different from the word edákrysen, which is used to describe the episode in which Jesus weeps for the death of his friend Lazarus (Jn 11:35).
The lamentation of Jesus in front of Jerusalem recalls the weeping of the prophets over the cities destined for God's judgment. The siege of the city, which took place by Flavius Titus Vespasianus in 70 AD. it is linked to his rejection of the Messiah promised in the First Testament. Like the murderous tenants (Lk 20:9-18), after having refused the numerous appeals of the prophets, the religious leaders of Jerusalem will have the same Son of God put to death. With the destruction of the holy city and its Temple will be inaugurated the last times, in which God will be adored "in spirit and truth" (Jn 4:23) by believers, living stones of the spiritual temple which is the very body of Christ, vivified by his Spirit.
Yet many times even the Church, in the course of its history, has not understood the way of peace (Lk 19:42), doing just what Paul considers unacceptable in his First Letter to the Corinthians: to curse in the name of Jesus. in fact the meaning of saying "Jesus is anathema": it is not a question of cursing Jesus, but of exploiting the name of the Son of God to curse the brothers, in a similar way to how the pagans did, when they resorted to a divinity to curse men .
Even among the brothers who proclaim "Jesus is Lord" (1 Cor 12,3) there have been over the centuries, wars, massacres, persecutions. This happens when believers and Christian denominations do not know how to recognize their respective charisms and, far from feeling part of a single body, they are tempted to exercise power and to the violent imposition of a Christian "single thinking", which is very different from the unity rooted in the gospel.
The trade that Jesus found inside the temple of Jerusalem has seduced the Christian churches themselves over time, with the sale of indulgences, relics and ecclesiastical offices, the perversion of ministries into an instrument of power rather than service, the exploitation of popular devotions to profit. Even the churches of the Protestant Reformation have not been exempt in history from the search for alliances and compromises with political power and have not always remained faithful to the word of the Gospel.
But every day the Lord teaches in the temple (Lk 19:47); the Holy Scriptures are the yardstick by which to measure how close our churches are to the will of God. When it is founded on the Word of God, the Church can resist every siege, because it is founded on the rock which is Christ himself (Mt 7:24-25). The gifts of the Spirit will thus be distributed in abundance and God will work everything in everyone, according to the diversity of charisms.
- Rev. Dr. Luca Vona
