Saint Matthew - Chapter 23
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| Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets. J-J Tissot |
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered together thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldest not?
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, &c. He repeats Jerusalem twice, to express the depth of His grief and compassion. It is as though He said, “O Jerusalem, city of God, chosen by Him and beloved above all other cities, which He has adorned with so many graces and benefits,—the law, the Temple, priesthood, doctrine, enriched with a kingdom, Prophets, miracles,—thou hast always been ungrateful for all these things. Thou hast slain the Prophets, and soon thou wilt kill Me and My Apostles. Wherefore thou hast become a wicked and lost city, destined by God to be destroyed and burnt by the Romans.” By city, the inhabitants, especially the Priests and magistrates, who chiefly were guilty of the blood of the Prophets, are meant.
That killest the prophets. S. Luke says that Christ added, it cannot be that a Prophet perish out of Jerusalem: it was the appropriate work of Jerusalem to kill the Prophets.
How often have I wished, formerly by the Prophets, and now by Myself and the Apostles, to gather into My bosom, to bring back to the one God and the one faith, thy sons,—that is, thy citizens, who are scattered unto various errors, and are hurling themselves into the perils of Gehenna. For nothing disperses like sin, and nothing so gathers us to God as virtue, says Theophylact.
As a hen gathereth her chickens, wandering in different directions, under her wings, to cherish and warm them, and defend them from the hawk.
Christ compares Himself, and His love and solicitude to save the Jews, to a hen cherishing her chickens under her wings. First, because hens love their young ones above all other birds, and manifest the greatest care and protection over them, says S. Chrysostom. Thus a hen calls and clucks, so that even if she cannot see her chickens, they may recognise their mother by her call. Whilst sparrows, swallows, storks, are only recognised by the parent birds whilst they are in their nests. Christ has loved us with supremest love, “being made Himself,” says S. Hilary, “as it were, an earthly and domestic bird, being anxiously solicitous for us all through His life, teaching, sighing, and groaning, in order that He might save us.”
2. Neither sparrows, nor thrushes, nor ducks, nor any other birds become so weak when they have young as the hen does, whose voice “becomes hoarse,” says S. Augustine (in Ps. 59): “the whole body becomes neglected, the wings droop, the feathers become loose, and all this is the effect of maternal love. Thus Christ gathered all nations, like a hen her chickens, Who became weak for our sakes, receiving flesh from us, that is, from human nature, was crucified, despised, slapped with the hand, beaten, hung on the cross, wounded with a lance. Therefore this is of maternal infirmity, not loss of majesty, that inasmuch as He shared with us in our infirmity, He might release us from our sins.”
3. The same Augustine says on the words in the 91st Psalm, “Thou shalt be safe under his feathers,” “If a hen protects her young ones under wings, how much rather shalt thou be safe under the wings of God, against the devil and his angels, who fly round about like hawks, that they may carry off the young chickens.”
4. The word in the Greek for hen is ὄρνις, which is a generic name for any bird, but the Vulg. does well to translate it by gallina, a hen. For, as S. Augustine says, it is wonderful what love almost all birds, but especially the hen, show in cherishing and protecting their young.
5. A hen with a branch of rue under her wings, says Pierias, is the hieroglyphic of security. Afranius, in the particulars which Constantine ordered to be collected about agriculture, says that hens will be safe from the cat if a little bunch of wild rue be tied under one of their wings. Democritus says further, that the same herb will protect them from foxes, and from every other hostile animal. Such security, only in a far higher degree, does Christ afford to His people.
6. A hen is the symbol of fruitfulness. It often lays an egg a day, and sometimes two in a day. And one egg occasionally produces two chickens. What is more fruitful than Christ?
Again, a cock and a hen are the symbol of watchfulness and guardianship. What is more watchful than Christ?
Tropologically: a hen is the Church and her Priests. For, as Auctor Imperfecti says, “As a hen that hath young ones does not cease to call them, but with assiduous clucking checks their straying away; so also ought Priests not to cease by their teaching and zeal to correct the negligence of an erring people. And as a hen that hath chickens not only warns her own young ones, but even loves as her own the young of any bird excluded from those to whom they belong; so likewise does the Church not only study to call her own Christians, but Gentiles and Jews also, if they be brought to her; she quickens them all with the warmth of her faith. She regenerates them in baptism, she nourishes them by preaching, and she loves them with maternal charity.”
7. There exists the figure of a hen with the motto, “Where Christ has been received, there is nothing sad.” Also,
8. The eggs of hens are said to be useful in various complaints, such as pains in the eyes and gout. So likewise is Christ the best Physician of all the infirmities of souls.
9. When a hen is in any peril which threatens herself alone, as from a kite, or a cat or dog, she flees. But if she fears danger for her young ones, she gathers them under her wings, and strives to protect them by every means in her power. She will often fight for them with her wings, her beak, and her whole body. So Christ fought for us against the devil and sin unto death, even the death of the cross.
And ye would not: because ye will pursue Me with hatred even unto death, and will not suffer your citizens to be converted unto Me and your God. This, as I have already observed, is especially addressed to the Scribes and rulers.
[38] Ecce relinquetur vobis domus vestra deserta.
Behold, your house shall be left to you, desolate.
Behold your house, &c. That is, the Temple, says S. Jerome and Theophylact; but more correctly, the city of Jerusalem and the whole region of Judea, which, as the punishment of such black ingratitude, was to be laid waste by the Romans, under Titus. There is an allusion to Jer. 12:7, “I have left my house, I have forsaken my inheritance.” For when Jerusalem was forsaken by God, it became the synagogue of Satan, and so the prey of the Roman eagles under Titus and Vespasian, who partly slew the Jews, partly led them away captive, and partly scattered them over the whole world,
[39] Dico enim vobis, non me videbitis amodo, donec dicatis : Benedictus, qui venit in nomine Domini.
For I say to you, you shall not see me henceforth till you say: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.
For I say unto you, &c. “I will withdraw Myself from you into Heaven; and ye shall see Me no more upon earth, until the Day of Judgment, when I will condemn your unbelief.” Some take this verse to refer to Christ’s solemn entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, when the Jews cried aloud to Him, Hosanna, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. But this is clearly an erroneous opinion, for this triumphal entry was already past, as is plain from chap. 21:1, &c. These words were spoken by Christ after Palm Sunday, three days before His crucifixion. So the Fathers and Commentators, passim.
I say then that Christ is here speaking concerning the end of the world and the Day of Judgment. This is the opinion of S. Chrysostom, Theophylact, S. Augustine (de consens. Evang. lib. 2, cap. 75). As though He had said, “You, O ye Scribes, who constantly contradict and calumniate Me, saying that I am not the Messiah, but that I cast out devils by Beelzebub, shall not see Me from by and by, that is, after the few days before My death, in which I shall be conversant among you, until the Judgment Day, when ye shall be compelled, even against your will, to acknowledge Me as Messiah, the Son of God, and your Judge as well as the Judge of all men; and to cry Hosanna, if not with your outward lips, at least in your hearts and minds, though against your will. Then shall ye see that I was, and am Blessed, I who came in the Name of the Lord, inasmuch as I was sent by God the Father to redeem and save all mankind, then, I say, when ye ought to have worshipped and adored Me.”
Secondly, it is possible that this passage may be understood of the Jews, who about the end of the world shall be converted to Christ by the preaching of Elias, and who, when He shall presently come to judgment, will acknowledge Him to be Messiah, the Blessed of the Lord. As though He said, “You, O ye Jews, do not wish to acknowledge Me as Messiah, and persecute Me as a false Christ, even unto death; but your posterity in the end of the world will acknowledge and worship Me. On them, therefore, I will bestow My grace and glory, but you I will condemn to everlasting punishment. And this will be to my praise and honour and glory, but to your shame and everlasting contempt.” Thus does Christ prick the hard and unbelieving hearts of the Jews. This was prophesied by Osee 3:4, &c., to which Christ here makes allusion.
Standing in Solomon'sPorch, where He ever loved to be, Jesus has the town beneath Him, and mounts Zion, just now wrapped in shadow, rising above the western porch. And on the right can be seen the southern side of the Temple buildings surrounded by the rampart of the Chel. There is the Water-gate, or the south-eastern entrance to the Court of the Women. The day is now drawing to a close; the shadows of the buildings and porticoes are lengthening, indicating that it is about the ninth hour, or 3.00 PM. Soon the sun, still bathing the town with its light, will sink behind her and leave her in twilight. Jesus foresees that the city will ere long in her turn desert Him, and He mourns over the approaching state of the ungrateful town. He is not the first she has rejected; she had treated the prophets and the messengers from on high in a similar manner, as if she had made up her mind to remain blind. Jesus morns over this obstinate blindness and grieves at the thought of the punishment it will bring.
From The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by J-J Tissot (1897)
Totus tuus ego sum
Et omnia mea tua sunt;
Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam
Ad Jesum per Mariam
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