THEY WILL NOT LEAVE ONE STONE UPON ANOTHER

THEY WILL NOT LEAVE ONE STONE UPON ANOTHER
Rev 5.1-10; Ps 149; Lk 19,41-44
22 NOVEMBER

The temple of Jerusalem is chosen by the Lord as his house on earth, to be close to his people, so that he can always lead it along the path of the Covenant. If the people is not interested in the Covenant, it does not walk in its Law, it become idolatrous and the temple is useless. Leaving it safe and sound would be a sign of great illusion. It is destroyed so everyone might know that God no longer lives in Jerusalem.

After Solomon finished building the temple of the Lord, the royal palace, and everything else that he had planned, the Lord appeared to him a second time, as he had appeared to him in Gibeon. The Lord said to him: “I have heard the prayer of petition which you offered in my presence. I have consecrated this temple which you have built; I confer my name upon it forever, and my eyes and my heart shall be there always. As for you, if you live in my presence as your father David lived, sincerely and uprightly, doing just as I have commanded you, keeping my statutes and decrees, I will establish your throne of sovereignty over Israel forever, as I promised your father David when I said, ‘You shall always have someone from your line on the throne of Israel.’ But if you and your descendants ever withdraw from me, fail to keep the commandments and statutes which I set before you, and proceed to venerate and worship strange gods, I will cut off Israel from the land I gave them and repudiate the temple I have consecrated to my honour. Israel shall become a proverb and a byword among all nations, and this temple shall become a heap of ruins. Every passerby shall catch his breath in amazement, and ask, ‘Why has the Lord done this to the land and to this temple?’ Men will answer: ‘They forsook the Lord, their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt; they adopted strange gods which they worshiped and served. That is why the Lord has brought down upon them all this evil'” (1Kings 9,1-9).

The Second Book of the Maccabees reveals that the temple was chosen to serve the people, not the people for the temple. The temple is the means, the people is the end. If the end no longer exists, not even the means is right to exist. What good is a temple to a people not of God? It is demolished so everyone will know that it is no more of God.

Puffed up in spirit, Antiochus did not realize that it was because of the sins of the city’s inhabitants that the Lord was angry for a little while and hence disregarded the holy Place. If they had not become entangled in so many sins, this man, like Heliodorus, who was sent by King Seleucus to inspect the treasury, would have been flogged and turned back from his presumptuous action as soon as he approached. The Lord, however, had not chosen the people for the sake of the Place, but the Place for the sake of the people. Therefore, the Place itself, having shared in the people’s misfortunes, afterward participated in their good fortune; and what the Almighty had forsaken in his anger was restored in all its glory, once the great Sovereign became reconciled (2Mac 5,17-20).

Today, however, we are proceeding in a quite different way. Being Christ Jesus the temple on the earth of the living God, the world, even the Christian one, has decided to destroy itself the temple that is Christ, so no one might remind it what the end of its life is.

As he drew near, 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 and 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 decision to destroy Christ is the same one taken by the Jews. They were no longer of God. They had to remove the One who reminded them of the true God. Today the world no longer wants to have any relationship with the true God, it must remove the one who remembers the true God. Removing Christ from history, everyone can worship his God. However, it is ignored that only Christ carries within himself the only living and true God. Once Christ is removed, everyone worships the idol fabricated by his mind and heart. A sad Christian reality!

Queen of Prophets, Angels and Saints, do not allow false prophecy to ruin the Church.