Weeping over Jerusalem

 Photo: Canva.com

That the sight of a city can arouse such depth of emotion that one cannot but cry suggests that that person has a sense of what will befall that city. As we read in today’s gospel from Luke 19:41-44, Jesus could see what would happen to this great city of Jerusalem. It would only be another 40 years before this city would be besieged by the military might of Rome. What would happen is that a group of zealots, Jewish freedom fighters, would make there way secretly into the city and join forces with religious leaders to take over the city. They would expel the Roman garrison along with the governor and his entourage and then prepare for a siege. This was in 70 AD. A great Roman army would make their way down from the north. They applied a scorched earth policy in the way they devastated the towns and countryside throughout Galilee, Samaria down to Judea. The siege lasted for many months. But eventually the starving population could not withstand the constant attacks. The walls were breached and the Roman legions stormed through the city. They destroyed that great city, leaving one wall of the great Temple standing as a reminder to the people of Palestine of what they would suffer if they ever attempted to stand up to the might of the Roman empire. It remains to this day and is known as the Wailing Wall of Jerusalem. It is not the only memorial of its kind around the world. People go to Hiroshima to a memorial or a reminder of the devastation wrought by a single nuclear bomb and to the memorial in New York which reminds people of the collapse of the twin towers and to the many memorials throughout Europe that remind us of the lives lost during two world wars and others around the world. There will probably be others erected if we ever witness lasting peace in Gaza and Ukraine and Sudan and Myanmar and countless other places around the world where people have endured prolonged war. So, today we weep with Jesus over far too many cities around our planet. We also weep because too often leaders loose the opportunities to get their armies to lay down their arms and sit and talk with their enemies or victims. Otherwise they just create another generation of freedom fighters who carry the pain and the fury of their people into the turmoil and insanity of future wars. Let us continue to pray for peace in our world.