Homily for Thursday, 20 November 2014– Ferial

Thursday of the 33rd week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Revelation 5:1-10; Psalm 149:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6a, 9b; Luke 19:41-44

Who here has ever reached the end of a long journey and been disappointed, sad, or even angered by what we have seen? This is the experience of Jesus in our Gospel reading from Luke today and the experience of John, the narrator behind the Book of Revelation, in our first reading.

Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem takes up over a third of the Gospel of Luke, almost ten of twenty-four chapters. It begins with Jesus setting “his face toward Jerusalem… when the days for his being taken up were fulfilled,” a clear reference to Jesus’ passion and death. Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem in Luke ends with today’s Gospel reading. Jesus has reached Jerusalem after a long journey, and he looks over this glorious city and weeps.

Why does Jesus weep over Jerusalem? As it is today, Jerusalem in Jesus’ time was the cultural, economic, and religious powerhouse of Israel. But Israel of Jesus’ time was a society built on a few elites, under Roman occupation, with a great divide between rich and poor. By appearance, Jerusalem was a glorious city, but underneath its appearance it was a city that had not recognized “the time of [its] visitation”; had not built itself on the values of the kingdom of God: justice; peace; dignity; nobody being in need.

This is why Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. He has come to the end of a long journey, and what he sees disappoints him; makes him sad and angry. I can think of times in my life where I have reached the end of a journey and been disappointed, even sad and angry. While I was in Colombia the Basilian seminarians made a social justice pilgrimage to a town called Trujillo. About twenty years ago, Trujillo experienced massacres at the hands of drug lords and government-supported paramilitaries alike, who took the fertile land from poor farmers who were growing coffee and bananas to support their families, and processed cocaine from this land. Many people in Trujillo still face threats against their lives today.

Here in this nation, we see nothing as awful as in Trujillo, but we still see widening division between rich and poor. We still experience violence. We need only to go into the inner city of Rochester to see this; no need for a long journey.

Do we recognize “the time of [our] visitation”? Are we willing to build our city; our communities; our households; our Church on the values of God’s kingdom? If, instead of Jerusalem, Jesus were to come to the end of his long journey here in Irondequoit, how would he respond?

There is hope. The angel says to John in Revelation that we have been made into “a kingdom and priests to serve our God.” We near the end of a journey, the Church’s liturgical year, which ends next week. What is the city we see before us? Are we building our city on the values of God’s kingdom? Our Gospel calls us to build a city over which Jesus and we will not weep but be joyful; a people who recognizes “the time of [our] visitation,” here and now.