The Time Of Thy Visitation
Amongst all the Gospels of Trinitytide, today’s stands out as unusual and even unique. No miracles take place and no parables are told and explained. Instead we get a glimpse into the human emotions of our Lord followed by another glimpse, this time into his divine nature as he foretells a rather grim future for the holy city of Jerusalem.
As he approaches the city, he stops and spends some time “beholding” the view. Jerusalem was a different place back then. The great temple still stands, a monument to the ancient faith of the Jewish people and their loyalty to the God of Israel. Other great buildings stood here and there—Herod’s palace and the Roman Praetorium, for example. They represented an offensive contradiction to the Jews, with a weak and wicked king who was now subject to the Roman occupiers. The city was governed by a man called Pontius Pilate, a pagan who worshipped false gods and who was anathema in the eyes of every God-fearing Jew. And as for that temple, the great house of God that should have been the one place of refuge for the devout, a place of prayer where true worshipers could find the peace and solace of their religion, this temple devoted to Almighty God had become a place of commerce, a bazaar where people sold their wares, lent out money, and ignored their sacred surroundings as they sought to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor and gullible.
Our Lord gazed at this sight, knowing in his divine nature every single one of the sins being committed in the Holy City of Jerusalem, seeing the distracted and often wicked minds of his chosen people. He, as God, Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, had chosen them. They, in return, had used their free will to choose political power, material wealth and pleasure, and the oppression of the poor. God chose them. They refused to choose God. And Jesus wept over the city.
He lamented their ignorance, saying: “If thou hadst known, even thou, in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace… but thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.” Here they were, in the midst of their sacrilegious lives of sin, even as the fulfillment of all the prophets walked among them. Their Messiah had finally come, and they continued their sinning as though nothing had happened. And he warned those around him about the fate of the city. It was not a happy prophecy. Within thirty years of his death on the Cross, it was a prophecy that was fulfilled in every detail when the forces of Rome cracked down on the Jews and levelled Jerusalem and its temple to the ground.
After his prophecy he entered that temple and showed his supreme displeasure at what was going on there, taking a whip and driving the moneylenders and shopkeepers out of the temple. “My house is a house of prayer,” he told them in no uncertain terms, “but ye have made it a den of thieves.”
What are we to take away from this Gospel? On the surface, we realize the depth of our Lord’s knowledge and understanding of his fellow man. We understand a little better his human side too, his emotional reaction to the betrayal of his chosen people, first with his tears and then with his anger. We get this double insight into our blessed Lord, that he is indeed true God and true Man. But where does this take us? Apart from being a confirmation of what our faith teaches us about the dual nature of Christ, what can we learn from today’s Gospel that might perhaps strike us as pertaining to our own lives?
We should not have to think very long. When we look around at the state of the Church and the World, are we not also tempted to weep? When we behold the holy Temple that is the Catholic Church, do we not see that they have turned it from being the Church of God to a church of thieves? Thieves who have stolen from us the sacred faith revealed by God, who even now attempt to steal from us the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for which Christ died! And when we look to our own Herod’s Palace, the White House, do we not see today a weak and wicked “king” who is subject to those who truly occupy the hidden seats of power, the new Pontius Pilates of the deep state who seek to oppress the people of God? As we look from Rome to Washington and back to Rome, our own emotions flare up and jump from the depths of sadness to the flames of anger. As the Son of Man showed us, this is normal and human. We are human, we are not divine. And so, while we may fear the future, we cannot accurately predict it. We cannot prophecy the terrible things that are most likely coming our way for forsaking God in this world of ours. But we can do something to prevent those terrible things from happening.
God, you see, knows what’s about to happen to this world if we do nothing. But to give us one last chance, he has made this a new “Time of Visitation.” He has given us two warriors, one religious for the Temple, and one secular for Herod’s Palace. Is it too far-fetched to think of Archbishop Viganò and President Trump as human saviors sent by God to help us restore Church and State to what each should truly be? Make no mistake, both of them truly are human, each with human failures and imperfections to be sure. But then, so was St. Peter, on whom Christ built his Church. God hardly ever intervenes directly in human affairs. He prefers to use his imperfect creatures to fulfill his plan. So I don’t believe it to be blasphemous if we interpret the “visitation” of these two men as a part of that divine plan—especially when I see President Trump making that slight movement of his head at the exact moment a bullet was about to hit it.
Practically speaking, we should all be praying for both men. Praying that God continues to protect them and that he continues to inspire them to do his will. Praying that their religious and political convictions stir the minds of the people to remind them that without God, the one true God, neither Church nor State, nor indeed any of us as individuals, can continue to survive.
The last line of today’s Gospel is encouraging. After his display of anger in the temple, Christ returned to that temple. “And he taught daily in the temple.” In our own world, what does that mean? Simply that while he wants us to drive out the modernists from the Church and the godless liberals from the government, he will always remain with us, teaching his one true faith to those who listen. He will be with us always, even unto the consummation of the world. Our weeping should not lead to despair. Our anger should not lead to violence. We have been permitted the opportunity to support two men who can actually achieve results, so let’s just make sure we do our part to enable them to get things done. Vote for one of them and pray for both!