Jesus was descending the western slope of the Mount of Olives on his way to the Temple. He was accompanied by a crowd full of fervor that shouted praises to the Messiah. At one point Jesus stopped and looked down upon the city of Jerusalem stretched out at his feet. And seeing the city, he wept over it1 . It is an unexpected weeping that broke the joy of all. In that instant, the Lord saw how the city he loved so much was destroyed years later, because he did not know the time of his visitation. The Messiah had been in its streets, he had taught the Good News, its inhabitants had seen miracles..., and they remained the same. If you only knew in this day what can bring you peace! But now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come when your enemies will surround you and besiege you, and will narrow you on every side, and will lay you and your children waste, because you have not known the time when God has visited you.
Through these lines one can read the anguish that oppressed the heart of the Lord. "But why did Jerusalem not understand the very special grace of conversion that was offered to her on that very day with the splendor of the triumph of Jesus? Why did she obstinately close her eyes to the light? He had had occasions to recognize Jesus as his Messiah and his Redeemer; this now given to him would be the last. If she rejects this last benefit, all the evils described in the prophecy will fall irrevocably upon her. The Lord is filled with affliction, for He is not indifferent to the fate of men. His sorrow is so great that His eyes were covered with tears. The above words must have been pronounced with a particular accent of pain and sadness.
St. John has left us a record on another occasion of those tears of Jesus, which can be so consoling for our soul. The Master arrived at Bethany, where his friend Lazarus had died. There he met Lazarus' sister Mary. When Jesus saw her weeping, he was moved within himself and said, "Where have you laid him? They answered him, "Lord, come and see. At that moment Jesus gave vent to his grief over the death of that friend, and began to weep. The Jews present exclaimed, "Behold, how he loved him.
Jesus - perfect God and perfect man5 - knows how to love his friends, his intimates and all men, for whom he gave his life. This love that Jesus shows in his affliction is the human expression of the love that God has for mankind, the sensitive manifestation of the compassion with which he looks upon us. And today, in this time of prayer, we can contemplate the depth and delicacy of Jesus' feelings, and understand how he is not indifferent to our correspondence to this offer of friendship and salvation. He is not indifferent to our going to visit Him every day and staying with Him for a few minutes in front of the Tabernacle; He is not neutral to our daily efforts to increase our friendship with Him, to our efforts to live charity with care, to serve Him in the midst of the world? So many times he is the one who encounters us!
"Man cannot live without love. He remains for himself an incomprehensible being, his life is deprived of meaning if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate in it vividly (...). The man who wants to understand himself to the depths (...) must, with his restlessness, uncertainty and even with his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter into him with his whole being, he must "appropriate" and assimilate the whole reality of the Incarnation and Redemption in order to find himself. If this profound process is at work in him, then he bears fruits not only of adoration of God, but also of profound wonder at himself. What value must man have in the eyes of the Creator, if he has deserved to have so great a Redeemer (Roman Missal, Hymn Exsultet of the Easter Vigil), if God has given his Son, so that he, man, might not die but have eternal life (cf. Jn 3:16)!"6 Let us not cease to treat each day of Jesus who awaits us. In him is the end of our life.
Hablar con Dios