33rd Week in Ordinary Time

1st Reading: 1 Mac 2:15–29
Gospel: Lk 19:41–44
When Jesus had come in sight of Jerusalem, he wept over it and said, “If only today you knew the ways of peace! But now your eyes are held from seeing. Yet days will come upon you when your enemies will surround you with barricades and shut you in and press on you from every side. And they will dash you to the ground and your children with you, and leave not a stone within you, for you did not recognize the time and the visitation of your God.”

Commentary
Martin Luther King once said: “Let us believe that we have cosmic companionship…that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again. No lie can live forever!” All throughout history, the way of peace and love has always won. Sure, there have been, and still are, tyrants and for a time they can seem invincible; but in the end, they always fall. Let’s remember that whenever we’re in doubt as to whether the way of peace and love is God’s way. That’s just the way the world is meant to be.
Bad things that happen to us in our lives are trivial, when we consider that God is standing with us on the beach, breathing into the hurricane and yearning to breathe in and through us. In the face of the hurricane of injustice, we must never forget that the message that there is a reality, greater than ourselves, that is making a difference is deeper than the message of us making a difference…and that this reality invites us to say “yes” to participate in the process. So, if peace is the answer, it can’t be a stupid question!

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