Traditional Catholic Teaching - NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

If thou hadst known, and that in this thy day, the things that are to thy peace! St. Luke 19: 42.

Jesus wept over the blindness of the people of Jerusalem, knowing that for most of them He had come in vain to this world. He had preached in vain in their midst, and He was about to die for them in vain. He wept over the city because it did not know the things that were to its peace. It would have been to its peace to accept not only His teaching, but also the grace to be acquired by means of His redemption. His grace, that He offered with such infinite love, and the refusal of which forced tears of sorrow to flow from His sacred eyes, was ignored, not used, and even rejected with scorn and ingratitude by the Jews.

By shedding these tears our Lord showed Himself to be indeed our Redeemer. Just as on this occasion in His grief He sought to bring the Jews to a knowledge of their sinfulness, and to induce them to accept the grace offered them; so, later on, in the agony of His mind and body, He really won this grace for men.

By shedding these tears our Lord taught us that redemption did not mean merely teaching certain doctrines, but obtaining the grace that we need; for He would never have wept over Jerusalem for a matter of doctrine. At the present day people are fond of telling us that Jesus was nothing more than a teacher, who taught us to walk in charity; and they regard this charity as the motive of His actions and teaching in such a way as to represent every offense as a trifle, easily overlooked by God, forgetting that Jesus told the young man to keep the Commandments.

Jesus wept, because the Jews rejected the grace that He offered them that they might be truly converted, and released from their sins, and be able in future to endure the conflict with temptation; He wept, because they did not know the things that were to their peace. Mere instruction and a knowledge of the truth can not bring peace. Sin has planted discord in our hearts, and peace will reign in them only when atonement has been made for it. Man is not at peace when he has to struggle against obstacles that he can not overcome. When the task set us is beyond our strength, when we are striving to accomplish what is impossible, we are out of harmony with ourselves and a prey to bitter discontent. Peace can not prevail unless we not only know what we ought to do, but feel within us the power to carry it out. History teaches us that, with regard to what is right, we do not possess this power so completely as to be independent of God.

Jesus wept, both because the Jews refused to hear His teaching, and because they rejected His warnings and graces: "If thou hadst known, and that in this thy day, the things that are to thy peace!" What a reproach, what pain at their failure to recognize their Redeemer, the Bringer of Peace, do these words express! We can do nothing without God's grace, which Jesus, our Redeemer, won for us by His death on the Cross.

What is the use of all our knowledge if we are not cleansed from the sins into which we have fallen? And how can we be cleansed from them without Christ? We ought never to despair if we fall into sin; we have only to grasp His hand and rise again, so as to begin a fresh life with Him.

It would not, of course, benefit us much to rise again if we immediately fell back into the same sin, but even in this respect we acknowledge Jesus and the grace that He supplies as our sole support, and this encourages us when we realize our weakness and poverty. If we are poor in power, Jesus is rich in strength, and what would be impossible to us of ourselves, we can accomplish by His aid. However hard it may seem to us to cure our faults, we shall succeed through Him; for we are not fighting alone, but He is on our side. We can perform any good work, however difficult, yet not we, but Christ in us. He confirms our feeble strength, so that we can do whatever He requires of us for our good.

It is therefore His grace that works in us, and this thought ought to give us the humility that we need so much. All the good that we possess is due to God's grace, and so we can never boast of it, for it is God's, and not our own. As St. Augustine says:

"Whoever seeks his own glory on account of the good that belongs to God, is a thief and a robber. If any one, relying on the good qualities that he possesses, seeks his own glory rather than God's, he may be praised by men, but by Thee, 0 God, will he be blamed, because he uses Thy gift for his own and not Thy honour. If Thou blamest one who is praised by men, he can not be defended by them; if Thou judgest him, he can not be delivered by men after Thou hast condemned him."

Let us, therefore, humbly acknowledge that all good things come to us from God, and confess that we owe deliverance from sin and protection against evil to His grace alone. By humility and confidence we render ourselves worthy to receive the grace that will lead us to true peace. Jesus shed His Blood to purchase for us this Divine grace; may He never weep over us because we have rejected this grace, and not accepted Him as our Redeemer.

With heartfelt gratitude for His grace, let us often look up to God, striving better to appreciate the infinite benefit that He bestows upon us, and let us exclaim with St. Augustine:

"0 Lord, Thy grace ever encompasseth me, delivering me from all evil, for it saveth me from what is past, warneth me against present dangers and protects me against such as threaten me in the future."

May it save, warn and protect us always, until, saved by Thy mercy, we appear in Thy holy presence. Amen.

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