In today’s Gospel Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and the journey is almost over. In the verse just before this reading, the people were singing and shouting for joy as they accompanied Jesus. Suddenly there is a change of mood. Jesus himself is weeping. Luke gives us the Beatitudes and the woes, the Pharisee and the tax collector in the Temple, the rich man and Lazarus. Jesus laments over Jerusalem. He wept. Jesus did not weep because he hated cities. He wept because he loved. Love is the right reason for most things. Jesus’ words were almost entirely of quotations from Old Testament prophets: Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea. Jesus was not the first to grieve over Jerusalem; nor was he the last.
Across the valley from the city of Jerusalem there is a little church called “Dominus flevit”, which means “The Lord wept”. On the base of the altar there is a small mosaic showing a mother hen with her chicks. The chicks are under her wings for protection, some of them peering out in the way that little chicks do. This is a beautiful representation of Jesus’ saying that he wished he could gather the people of Jerusalem to him in the way a hen gathers her chicks. It is a motherly image, warm and protective.
If we think it is too sentimental an image we can think of it as follows: We used to call the Church on earth “the Church militant,” an image suggesting fundamentalist violence. But it meant to convey that we are struggling with sin, or in other words, with ourselves. The trouble with us is that we find it all too easy to oppose, to be militant against other people, but we are like chickens when it comes to struggling with ourselves.
Jesus loves us more than we can know. He shares intimately in our lives, rejoicing in our victories and weeping in our sorrows. He delights to see that same love alive in us, in our concern for others, and in the praise and adoration we offer for all his blessings.
