THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH Her Doctrine and Morals Ninth Sunday after Pentecost 14 August 2011

The Sunday Sermon

The sorrow of Jesus is placed right alongside His anger in today’s gospel. We first see Jesus in a most tender position overlooking Jerusalem. There He sees before Him the beloved city and people that God had given so much to, and in His divinity He beholds the evil that is overruling the city and the people. He can see into the future the destruction that will come upon them because of this evil.

The desire of Jesus is to gather these errant souls together and bring them to eternal peace and happiness, but they will not allow it. They will not listen, they will not follow, they will not gather to Him. Having given men a free will, He has bound Himself to respect it. Thus, all that is left for Him to do is to weep over them. The bitterness and pain of these tears can only be measured by the love God has for us. I dare say, that only those who have truly loved and lost know even a tiny bit of the pain suffered by Our Lord on this occasion.

Just after this most touching and tender scene we are shown Jesus in the temple where He has taken up a whip and chased out the money lenders and the buyers and sellers from the temple. When those souls could not be won over by love, the next best thing for them is to be stopped in their evil tracks with force. What appears to so many to be an act of anger and violence is in truth an act of love and kindness.

By chasing the profaners from the temple Jesus prevented them from heaping more sins upon their already over burdened conscience. They were prevented from offending God further and meriting for themselves a deeper place in hell. We witness that even in his anger there is no hatred but rather love and compassion.

St. Paul in today’s epistle, gives us likewise the example of the Israelites and the evils that they committed and the punishment that fell upon them as an example to us. They had not yet seen or received Jesus Christ but, we have received Him. They had experienced the love of God but appear to have been ignorant or so blinded that they could not see it. It was necessary for God to mercifully heap punishment upon them to stop them in their evil ways.

With us, God is expecting a greater understanding and love and therefore a greater cooperation with His grace and love. These things that they did came to pass as examples to us. We therefore are called upon to see and learn from the errors and mistakes of others. If love is not enough to motivate us then, God offers us the fear of punishment as He inflicted it upon those who came before us and sinned against God.

In both cases, it is an act of mercy and love for us that God either entices us to Himself with love and goodness or stops us in our evil tracks with pain and suffering. We are given examples of both of these in today’s Mass.

If our hearts are so hard and callous that the sight of the tears of Jesus for us does not move us to abandon vice and strive for virtue, at least the fear of His anger and punishment might at least mitigate the eternal punishment that we are heaping upon ourselves.

Let us strive to soften our hearts and spiritually kneel beside our Lord as he weeps for His children. Let us contemplate His love for us and His burning desire for us to come to Him and be fed and protected as the hen protects her chicks. Let us meditate upon how this love of Jesus has taken Him all the way to the death of the cross so that we might live. In this frame of mind we should be able to make the most perfect acts of Charity and contrition, because the site of such grand and beautiful love for us cannot but force us to reciprocate such love. In this state we will strive that we may be able to love as we have been loved. In accepting His love and sacrifice for us, let us be motivated to offer our love and sacrifices to Him.