NOTES for Luk 19:42
Here is the day which the prophet Isaiah spoke about with fear: God visited His people. People waited for this God's arrival since the high antiquity, they had put all their hope in Him. Not only Israel, but several other peoples at the beginning of the 1st century AD waited for the appearance of somebody, who would bring them peace and would open them the road of life. Even we in some degree inherited after two millenniums this expectation and hope of God's visit. The prophets announced that the sun will be darkened in this day and all creatures will be transformed, there will not be sins anymore and people will be redeemed from death. “Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down!” – the author of the second part of the book of Isaiah exclaim himself.“The voice of my beloved! Behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills” – as a happy meeting of lovers, the book of Solomon presents this day.
And here He comes. A multitude of the followers - may be some hundreds of men - praise God's mighty works and bless His coming. But at the same place, among a mistrustful crowd, are found those who consider necessary to merely reproach Him of indiscretion: "rebuke Your followers from praising God and You!" And almost nobody thinks about what He exhorted several times through the prophets to do: "return from your evil ways, in order not to die in this day ". Only His most blessed Mother and close followers were given the possibility to feel His tribulations. He comes, but we don't know that in this day, it is necessary for us to stop doing evil and learn to do good, in order to meet with Him. How to meet with Him, how to deserve His grace? What should we do so that He blesses and helps us? "Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live" he said through His prophet Amos (Amos 5:14). But we think that it is necessary to carry out certain cults and to make luxurious festivities; as if they could serve us as peace, or give us peace in this meeting with the Lord Jesus.
If He does not enter in Jerusalem today, we wouldn't be partakers of His Body and Blood. If He doesn't give away His life for us, we shall remain in bonds of death. But His elected ones don't recognize the time of the visit, they don't know that the predicted day long-awaited has arrived. And that's why Jesus cries. The Lord spoke once of what His followers should be delighted. We understand today what we have to be afraid of: not knowing the time of the visit.