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Jesus
How often I had longed to take
the children of Jerusalem
and gather them to me.
But they refused.
But now these women weep for me
and my heart mourns for them --
mourns for their sorrows that will come.
I comfort those who seek to solace me.
How gentle can you be, my other self?
How kind?
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Response
O Lord, how often have I been so immersed in pain that I feel only the blows of my tormentors and have failed to look up and hear the wailings of those on the sidelines who feel my pain as they feel theirs? Guide me, and those who seek to follow you, to follow your guide and reach out with compassion and solace to those fellow travellers on the painful path.
May gentleness become my cloak
Teach your Church, O Lord, to mourn the sins of which it is guilty, and to repent and forsake them; that, by your pardoning grace, the results of our inequities may not be visited upon our children and our children's children; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
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| The crowd following the procession had grown,
most notably the women. Jesus could hear their crying, sobbing
and wailing. The shrill pitch of the wailing brought him to
a stop, he turned and addressed them.
"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and your children" (Luke 23:27)
They were stunned. Unable to response. Confused at his meaning.
He continued, "For the time will come when you will say, 'Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breast that never nursed!' Then they will say to the mountains 'Fall on us!' and to the hills, 'Cover us!' For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?" (Luke 23:29-13)
Even at this moment of terrible suffering for him, Jesus was not thinking of himself, he was thinking of humanity and the opening of another drama before his eyes. These wailing women would need to change their lives. The kingdom of God was near.
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