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Master·evangeli.net

Today's Gospel + short theological explanation

Thursday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
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Gospel text (Lk 19:41-44): 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... and they will not leave one stone upon another within you because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”

Announcement of the destruction of Jerusalem

EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)

Today, Jesus Christ, crying for Jerusalem, announces its dramatic end, which would happen in the year 70. With the expulsion of the Procurator Gessius Florus and the successful resistance to the Roman counterattack, the Jewish war started in the year 66. This was not merely a war of Jews against Romans: in broader terms it was also a civil war between rival Jewish factions and their ringleaders. This was what accounted for the full horror of the fight for Jerusalem.

Jesus’ words reveal above all His deep love for Jerusalem, its passionate fight to attain the "Yes" from the Holy City to the message that He is to deliver. But the core of His words does not point to the external actions and destruction of the war but, in the end, to the historical-salvific sense of the Temple, which turns into a house that "becomes empty": that ceases to be the place of God's presence.

—O Jesus, new Temple of God, I beg Your forgiveness for the many times I have failed to receive You.

November 10th
Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Gospel and commentary video

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November 9th
Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome

Gospel and commentary video