MARY, OUR MOTHER

Even the Angels weep.                   Image by BL1961 via Flickr

SCRIPTURE COMMENTARY #568

And there followed him a great multitude of people and of women, who bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning to them, said: "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not over me; but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days shall come, wherein they will say: Blessed are the barren and the wombs that have not borne and the paps that have not given suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains: Fall upon us. And to the hills: Cover us. For if in the green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the dry?" (Luke 23:27-31)

THE COMPASSION OF THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS: Even as it was with our Lord, when He made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, so was it with Him in the midst of His sufferings, when He was being led out to death; He  did not think of Himself, but of the dreadful judgment which would ere long overtake Jerusalem and all its people. On the former occasion, He wept over the blindness and inevitable overthrow of the holy city; and now again He thinks with sorrow and compassion of the misery of the people. "Weep not for Me," He exclaimed to the weeping women of Jerusalem, "but weep for yourselves and for your children." Having on the first occasion warned ungrateful Jerusalem in vain, He now, in the midst of His Passion, strove to save His very tormentors from the coming judgments. He bore no rancor in His Heart at the ingratitude of His people, who had loaded Him with injuries and were dragging Him to a shameful death, but mourned over the temporal and eternal woe of those who were so blinded by their passions. There could be no heart so noble and loving as the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

[From 'A Practical Commentary on Holy Scripture' by Bishop Knecht, D.D.]

(1899 Douay-Rheims Bible)