Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! The Lord be with you, a reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. Is Jesus Jr. 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. They will encircle you and hem you in on all sides. They will smash you to the ground in your children within you and they will not leave one stone upon another within you because you
did not recognize the time of your visitation. The Gospel of the Lord. For the last several weeks, we have been traveling with Jesus from Jericho, the lowest place on earth, all the way up to Jerusalem. Luke 951,
said that Jesus fixed his face on Jerusalem. He was laser-beamed on what he would accomplish there. And we have been journeying with him as he has been teaching us by his words, as well as by his actions all the way. That ascent from Jericho into Jerusalem is about 20 miles incessantly uphill from the lowest place on earth to a high promendary. You pass through the Judean desert as you're ascending on your left.
And when you get up toward the Mount of Olives, coming around Bethany and look over the eastern side of Jerusalem, which is where the temple was, normally you were blown away. The gold that had been put up there on the temple and vines coming around would be resplendent in the sun. It was almost blindingly beautiful. This time Jesus gets there.
And rather than having one of those wah-wah-ah moments that were common for all Jews, when he gets there looking at Jerusalem, the one we're about to celebrate in just three days is the king of the universe. Weeps. He starts balling his eyes out. And it's important for us to ponder Jesus's tears. They matter.
Why did he cry? He cried because Jerusalem was going to be destroyed. And there was a reason why they were going to be destroyed. Because Jerusalem had never quite grasped that God had come to help them. They weren't aligning their life to God and because of that. There would be opposing themselves. And then they would be looking at things in such a political lens that they would oppose the Romans and the Romans would come on and destroy it all.
If only he says they had recognized the time of their visitation. Now it's so important for us to understand that word visitation. We all know what the word visit is. It's temporary. A visitation is something way more permanent. In the church there are various visitations. We're not talking about the second joyful mystery here.
When a diocese, when a religious order, when a parish has some trouble, a visitor is sent on in to be able to examine the whole situation, to be able to praise what deserves praise, and then to correct what has to be fixed. Jesus had come into the world not to pay us a visit, say bye, and then leave us on our own.
Jesus had come to visitate the human race as one of us. And Jerusalem never realized the time of their visitation. They didn't accept Jesus for who he was and what he was doing. And there was a result of that rejection.
because they would retain the types of vices that would lead to his crucifixion, it would similarly lead to the destruction of all the beauty there in Jerusalem, including and especially the temple. It's important for us to grasp Jesus' tears.
If you go to the Mount of Olives today, looking over the temple, it's the best photo area you can get in Jerusalem. There is a church built in the 20th century called Dominus Flavite. The Lord wept. I've had the privilege in my 15 pilgrimages to the Holy Land to celebrate Mass there several times. One, I think it was in 2012, we're in there during torrential downpours way heavier than what was hit in New York at 4 a.m. this morning if anybody else was up.
pouring, raining down the window behind the altar that looks out at the temple area. And that meteorological event was just a little bit of a glimpse of what it must have been like for the creator of the human race to weep. Remember, he wasn't weeping over ancient Rome. He wasn't weeping over modern day, Amsterdam,
or San Francisco, or Las Vegas, or Bangkok. He was weeping over the holy city that even those who absolutely should have known better didn't recognize the time of the visitation. Does New York recognize the time of our visitation that the same Lord Jesus comes to be with us? Do we recognize what's going on?
Or are we just as clueless as Jerusalem? Do we think that all these skyscrapers are going to remain forever? Do we think that St. Patrick's or Notre Dame are going to remain forever? Are we doing what makes for peace, as Jesus said? Or are we living in such a way that there won't be peace either with God or with others? And all will eventually end up suffering.
will be the fruits of that lack of peace. Jesus wept. We see in the first reading that St. John likewise wept and we need to to ponder his tears because his tears like the Lord Jesus is like ours when we mourn are meant to be turned into joy but we have to see how
We have to see what we need to do at that visitation. And we get a glimpse of it in the Book of Revelation. St. John was weeping because no one could open the scroll because no one was worthy to open the scroll and break open its seals. He wanted it to be open because, as we heard yesterday, it was going to reveal everything that was coming down in the future. But nobody was ready.
and he wept, but that weeping was salvific. Until what? Until one of the elders said to him, don't weep. The lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, is triumph, enabling him to open the scroll with its seven seals. Big words there, big phrases, the lion of the tribe of Judah. What does that mean? We see in Genesis 49,
that when Jacob was referring to his 12 sons, and when he saw Judah, he said, you are a lion's wealth. You're a baby lion. And so throughout the centuries, from that time onward, the tribe of Judah, from which would come the Messiah, we were looking for a lion. And Jesus was, of course,
born there in Bethlehem of Judah, symbolic of who a lion is. King. So he was expecting a lion. The root of David will hear that throughout Advent which is coming on up. A shoot from the stump of David would eventually come that even though they tried to cut down
Jesse's tree, there would still be a chute coming on out, and that's where the hope was placed. And so St. John is waiting to see the lion of the tribe of Judah. He's waiting to see this root of David. So what does he see? He doesn't see anything that looks like a lion or a chute.
Then I saw standing in the midst of the throne and the four living creatures and the elders we talked about who those were yesterday. Amidst them all, he saw a lamb looking as if he has been slain. It's our lamb, an instrument of sacrifice, looking as if he has been sacrificed. But actually, somehow, strangely, mysteriously,
alive. And that lamb comes, and he is the one who received the scroll from the right hand of the one who sat on the throne, God the Father. When he took it, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, just like they had fallen down before the elder on the throne. They were following down before Jesus, just like they had God the Father.
Each of the elders held a harp and cold bowls filled with incense. The prayers of the Holy Ones and they sang a new hymn. Worthy are you to receive the scroll and break open its seal. For you were slain and with your blood, you purchased for God those from every tribe and tongue, people and nation. You made of them a kingdom and priests for God and they will reign on the earth. So the one who opened the soul of the scroll unsealed the seals.
was this lamb looking as if he has been slaughtered, but very, very much alive. That was Jesus. And he was worthy to receive it all. He opened up as we're going to see what would be coming so that we would all know how to live. But what was the chief purpose of it all according to the book of Revelation today? You made them a kingdom.
we're preparing for the celebration of Christ the king and he wanted us to enter into that kingdom. And how do we kingdom and priest for our God and they will reign on the earth. This is talking about the fact that he the eternal high priest wants us to be a kingdom of priests, not ministerial priests like me, kingdom of what we call the baptismal priest, the common priest of the lady, which is throughout
the documents of the Second Vatican Council, which is a prominent part of the catechism. We're all called to be baptized priests. What does that mean? That we look at our whole life as a sacrifice, just as Christ was priest, victim, and offering. So we are. We offer ourselves.
together with Christ to the Father. He's created a kingdom of people who love like this, love God like this, who see their entire life in this way. That's what we do at every Mass. When I say, pray brothers and sisters, that this sacrifice, yours and mine may be acceptable to God, the Almighty Father. We're offering ourselves and what we have and our hopes, our joys, our sorrows, we're offering it all to the Lord.
That's the future. That's why the Lamb opens up the scrolls. That's what we're being asked to do. What type of a baptismal priest are we? Are we somebody who offers little or somebody who offers something? Are we someone who tries to offer everything we are in half?
Today, the church celebrates someone who shows us this baptismal priesthood. My ministerial priesthood is at the service of your baptismal priesthood. The whole reason why it exists is to help you make that sacrifice. I celebrate the Mass so that all of our sacrifice, myself as baptismal priest as well, but all of our sacrifice can be offered here to the Father. One body, one spirit, bride and bridegroom, body and head.
Our lady shows us how this is done. Today we celebrate her presentation. Does anybody know which book of sacred scripture this is from? It's a trick question, but Maddie. It's not in sacred scripture. Good answer, Maddie. It's from the pseudo-gospel, the apocryphal or fake gospel of St. James. Written about 200 years after Mary would have been a kid. So worthless in terms of its theology.
but okay in terms of some of the facts that would put in which was part of the oral tradition of the church. That's where we get the names of Mary's parents, Joachim and Ann, and that's where we get this tradition, that at three, she was brought by Joachim and Ann who had longed for a child for 20 years. And during the time where they were praying, St. Ann had said, Lord, if you give me a child,
I will place the child at your service." And that's when she conceived Mary. And then at the age of three, with Joachim brought Mary up to the temple to place Mary in the school of girls around the temple to be offered to the service of the Lord. It might seem like this aged woman who had wanted the entire life to have a child of her own. What a loss!
Handing her over to the temple, she would no longer be carrying out the various joys and sometimes the burdens of being a mob. But in fact, this was the means by which she would become the grandmother of all the living. Just as Mary would be the mother of all the living. She would have more grandchildren than any possible grandmother ever, including you.
And Mary grew up there. That's where she was raised. That's where she was prepared to explode with her Magnificat. That's where she got ready to say yes to the Lord and everything. That's what we celebrate today. Mary recognized her whole life was to be an offering. She grew up in the temple where the sacrifices of the old were made and she would have seen them. She would have smelled them every day.
and she became the one who at the foot of the cross as her son was offered as that lamb who united herself fully to that oblation. We celebrate her today and we ask her prayers to be able to imitate her. There's also something else that the church marks today which shows us how this is done. It's probably the most neglected area of the entire church and it needs to be fixed.
since the time of Pope Pius XII in the 1950s, 1955, exactly, and then really spruced up by John Paul II in 1997. The Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Temple is what we call Pro-Orantibus Day, Latin for the day in which we pray for those praying. Pray for those praying for us, all those in cloistered monasteries,
and convents, whose whole existence is offering themselves in prayer for us, that we similarly might become that kingdom of priests for God our Father, so that we might recognize the time of our visitation, so that we might allow Jesus' tears and John's tears to cleanse us, so that we might follow what is in the book that's now in open book about the way we please the Lord.
Most of the time we forget about those who are cloistered. I visited the monastery of Corpus Christi to visit the cloistered Dominican nuns this morning because one of my spiritual erectees is the priors there. To be able to visit the sisters and just thank them for what they do for all of us. Their prayers matter. Many Catholics think that they waste their lives, that they do nothing.
They're wasting their time. They work super hard behind the oyster, and they're offering it all up for you and for me. Today is the one day in the church's calendar in which we thank God for them. We try to thank them, and we learn from their self-allicost what the Lord asks of each of us. When someone follows a religious vocation like that, it challenges each of us to say,
Am I as all in as they are? We may not have the vocation to be a cloistered religious. We may have the vocation to be married. We may have the vocation to be a ministerial preach, whatever. Are we as all in as they are? They are seeking to respond to the Lord with a hundred percent of their mind, heart, soul, and strength. Are we? That's what they're praying for.
Today, at this mass, as we approach the altar, we recognize that this is meant to be the summit of our baptismal priesthood. When we, together with Jesus' offering from the upper room and cavalry for our salvation, offer all we are in have. We offer it for our needs. We offer it for the needs of the world.
Today, we ask the prayers of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the justice she was at the foot of the cross, that she will stand here with us, praying so that our sacrifice with her sons may truly please the Father. The lamb, looking as if he has been slain, has opened the scrolls as we prepare to behold the Lamb of God
who takes away the sins of the world. Let us ask for the grace to recognize that he's coming to visit us in Holy Communion and to take up his residence within. May we respond to him with the same love with which Mary received him. Praise be Jesus Christ.
