You did not recognize the time of your visitation

1 Mac 2,15-29; Ps 49; Lk 19,41-44
21 NOVEMBER

Not only does God come to visit us to bring his consolation, blessing, peace, life, truth, light and every other gift, but also to invite us to conversion for the return into his truth, law, justice, obedience and holiness. If after repeated invitations and calls we remain in sin and death, we will be consumed by sin and death. God cannot act with his life towards those who have decided to run through paths of death. The Lord visits Abraham and Sarah to give them the consolation of a son. He visits Sodom and Gomorrah because he wants to see if there are also margins to pour life into them.

“Where is your wife Sarah?” they asked him. “There in the tent,” he replied. One of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah will then have a son.” Sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent, just behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years, and Sarah had stopped having her womanly periods. So Sarah laughed to herself and said, “Now that I am so withered and my husband is so old, am I still to have sexual pleasure?” But the Lord said to Abraham: “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I really bear a child, old as I am?’ Is anything too marvellous for the Lord to do? At the appointed time, about this time next year, I will return to you, and Sarah will have a son.” Because she was afraid, Sarah dissembled, saying, “I didn’t laugh.” But he said, “Yes you did.” The men set out from there and looked down toward Sodom; Abraham was walking with them, to see them on their way. The Lord reflected: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, now that he is to become a great and populous nation, and all the nations of the earth are to find blessing in him? Indeed, I have singled him out that he may direct his sons and his posterity to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord may carry into effect for Abraham the promises he made about him.” Then the Lord said: “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave, that I must go down and see whether or not their actions fully correspond to the cry against them that comes to me. I mean to find out.” (Cf. Gen 18,1-33).

The Father of heaven visits his people by sending his Only Begotten Son in the flesh, as a true man. The Son comes, invites to conversion and to faith in the Gospel. He shows the signs of his truth, more than Moses in Egypt and during the forty years of desert. More than Elijah and Elisha. More than any other prophet and righteous man that preceded him. Spiritually governed by an army of false prophets, Jerusalem becomes deaf, insensitive and even decides through its leaders to kill the Son of the Father. Does the visit of God end with the killing of the Son? The Lord continues to send his messengers. Jesus sends his Apostles. But even against those sent by Christ the Lord there is obstinacy and will of death. The last one to be sent was Paolo. An execratory oath was also made against him for his elimination. God can no longer pour any protection, defence and life on Jerusalem. When the Lord can no longer guard, there is no human custody. No longer protected by God, Jerusalem falls into the hands of the pagans. But for its very serious fault: it did not want to let itself be visited by the Lord. It did not get converted to his Word.

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.”

Jesus loves his people. He loves the city in which the Lord has set his home. It is the people the one that does not love its God and that rejects him. If a man extinguishes the fire in the middle of the ice, might he ever heat himself up? It is not the cold that kills man. It is the man that kills himself because he decided to extinguish the fire. The people decided to remove God from their life, because only He is the Giver of life, they decided to walk on paths of death. From this moment on Jerusalem is conquerable and it can also be destroyed. It misses the wall of fire that protects it and this wall is the Lord. But it is not God the one who moves away, it is the people that decided to extinguish the divine fire.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints arrange that we always let ourselves be visited by our God.