Smile upon or Weep over?

WORD 2day: Thursday, 33rd week in Ordinary time

November 17, 2022: Revelation 5:1-10; Luke 19: 41-44

The Gospels picture in two places, Jesus weeping: once in the Gospel according to John (11:35) at Lazarus' tomb; and the other is the passage we have today from Luke (19:41). In the first instance he wept for his friend; and today he is weeping for Jerusalem, that is the chosen people of God, the people called to come under the wings of the Lord who wanted to protect them all as a hen does to her chicks. But the people weren't prepared. Jesus wept thinking of their obstinacy, their choice against God's plan of salvation!

In the first reading we have another instance of weeping: John who weeps for the fact that there was no one worthy to open the scrolls. Opening the scrolls means being the mediator between God's ever present love and our absolute need for that merciful love. There is one who is worthy: Jesus, the Son of God...the One mediator who revealed to us who God really is to us and what we are called to be. In our obstinacy we can remain in our own shells and do merely what pleases us, instead of opening our hearts and letting Jesus in, letting that only mediator act in our behalf. We can be so hardhearted that we can miss out the greatest of treasures presented to us, in simple and ordinary ways, everyday.

The choice is ours - to make the Lord smile upon us and takes us into his loving and merciful embrace, or to make the situation so grim as to make the Lord weep over us! Let us not be people over whom Jesus would have to weep. Being sensitive to the messages that Lord gives us on a daily basis, through the Word, through the daily events, through persons we encounter, through the insights that dawn on us... we will be prepared to receive the Lord and the love of God that he mediates. 

Let the Lord smile upon us, not weep over us!