The time of our visitation...
Do we recognize Christ when he comes into our lives?
As Jesus drew near Jerusalem, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If this day you only knew what makes for peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. For the days are coming upon you when your enemies will raise a palisade against you; they will encircle you and hem you in on all sides. They will smash you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another within you because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”
In today’s gospel passage (Luke 19:41-44), Jesus weeps over the Holy City—what a powerful image!
Christ prophecies the siege and destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 at the end of the Jewish-Roman War. The victorious legions would demolish the Second Temple and parade the Menorah and the Table of the Bread of God’s Presence in triumph through the streets of Rome. The event was memorialized in the Arch of Titus, which still stands to this day. All this must take place, says Jesus, because Jerusalem did not recognize the time of its visitation.
While the gospels record that many people of Galilee and Judea did recognize Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Messiah, the leaders of the Jewish nation, the priests and scribes of Jerusalem, hardened their hearts and closed their eyes. Jesus appeared to them as a threat to their power, to their comfort, to their cherished ways of looking at the world. He was not the kind of Messiah they expected and in their obstinacy and pride they failed to recognize him.
With two thousand years of hindsight, it’s easy to judge these men. But are we really so different? When Jesus appears in the midst of our lives, do we recognize the time of our visitation? Or are we blinded by our preconceptions, by our prejudices, by our cherished ways of doing things?
Last week the Church celebrated the feast of St. Martin of Tours. You may remember the famous tale concerning him: He gives half his cloak to a miserable beggar by the roadside. That very night Martin receives a vision of Christ clad in the very cloak he gave to the poor man. Jesus proclaims to the angels surrounding him, “See how Martin has covered me with his cloak.”
Whether conscious of it or not, Martin had recognized the person of Christ visiting him in the beggar. Do we perceive Jesus in the people the world is most anxious to discard—the inconvenient, the stranger, the physically or mentally ill? How do we respond? Do we recognize Christ’s coming to us in the Eucharist under the humble signs of Bread and Wine? Or do we receive him with indifference and unbelief?
Christ has many disguises. When he comes to us, will we recognize the time of our visitation?
The daily scripture readings can be found on the USCCB website.