A Reading from St. Gregory, Pope and Doctor
On the End of Life

I desire Brethren, if it is possible, to run briefly through the explanation of this short lesson of the holy Gospel, so that those who know how from the knowledge of a few things to reflect on many, may be given a fuller understanding of this.  That the Lord, on this occasion of His weeping, described to us that overthrow of Jerusalem which took place under the Emperors Titus and Vespasian there is no one who has read the history of that disaster can doubt.  For the Roman rulers are here referred to when He says:  For the days shall come upon thee: and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straighten thee on every side, and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee.

 

That He also added:  They shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, bears witness even to the very translation of the city itself, for the former Jerusalem, as we are told, was wholly destroyed, while the present city was constructed outside the gate, upon the site where our Lord had been crucified.  He then adds the reason why this chastisement was inflicted on Jerusalem:  Because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation.  For the Creator of all things had deigned, through the mystery of His Incarnation, to visit it, but it had not concerned itself either with His love or with His fear for it. And because of this the prophet rebukes them, and even invokes the testimony of the birds of heaven against them, where he says:  The kite in the air hath known her time: the turtle and the swallow and the stork have observed the time of their coming:  but my people have not known the judgment of the Lord (Jer. viii. 7).