Jerusalem's Doom – Christ's prophecy of chastisement
The final Sunday after Pentecost features Christ's dramatic prophecy of the doom, chastisement and destruction of Jerusalem – foreshadowing what will come at the end of the world.
The final Sunday after Pentecost features Christ’s dramatic prophecy of the doom, chastisement and destruction of Jerusalem – foreshadowing what will come at the end of the world.
Editor’s Notes
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The last Sunday after Pentecost, and the first Sunday of Advent, both deal with the end of the world, and the second coming of Christ.
In those years in which Easter falls early, Epiphanytide is cut short, and the Church transfers parts of their Sunday Masses to the period between the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost and the Sunday before Advent – which is still called the 24th Sunday after Pentecost.
Over these “spare” Sundays, the Roman Liturgy presents us with a dual sense of dread and confidence.
On the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, we see the Apostles battered by a terrible storm on the Sea of Galilee – which Our Lord alone can calm
On the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, Our Lord’s Parable of the Wheat and the Cockle warns us that his faithful will have to live side by side with heretics and the wicked – until the harvest at the end of the world
On the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, Our Lord’s parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven primarily deal with the state of the Church in this world, but St Matthew’s final comment points towards a terrible chastisement of the “Chosen People.”
On the final Sunday of Pentecost, we see what this chastisement was to be.
What’s more, we see that the chastisement of Jerusalem and the Jews is a foreshadowing and a warning of what is to come for the whole world at the end of time.
In this chapter, Fr Coleridge tells us…
How Our Lord’s prophesied Doom of Jerusalem is made up of four distinct components
That the first three pertain to the punishments of false teachers, wars and persecutions of the Church
How this terrible prophecy nonetheless contains a promise and encouragement for Christ’s faithful.
The Doom of Jerusalem
Passiontide—Part I
Chapter XIII
St. Matt. xxiv. 1-28; St. Mark xiii. 1-23; St. Luke xxi. 5-24;
Story of the Gospels, § 144.
(Read on the 24th and Last Sunday after Pentecost)
The Doom of Jerusalem – and of the World
The sacred historians tell us that when our Lord was leaving the Temple He lingered awhile, and that His disciples drew His attention to the magnificence of the buildings, which had lately been completed.
On this, He remarked that all was soon to be destroyed, and this led to the question which was asked when He had proceeded some way up on the Mount of Olives and was sitting opposite to the Temple.
The question was twofold, and undoubtedly the disciples who asked it hardly understood that there was so great a separation between the two events which were mentioned as was actually the case.
The first part of the question related to that which they had in their minds more immediately, that is, the destruction of Jerusalem.
The second part referred to the greater and more distant event of the end of the world, which they were accustomed to consider as almost simultaneous with the former event of the destruction of the city.
But they certainly distinguished plainly the one event from the other, and our Lord distinguished them with equal plainness in His answer.
Characteristics of the Last Prophecy
He spoke throughout with the indistinctness as to time which is common in all prophecies. It is no part of prophecy, in its ordinary statements, to mark off all the intervals that may be made historically between one point of the prediction and another. The perspective, so to speak, is often wanting in the words, though it may have been ever so clearly defined by the mind of the prophet.
That is what constitutes, ordinarily, the chief difficulty of predictions which embrace successive and perhaps long-separated events, and it is especially to be held in mind when the earlier of a succession of events which are foretold are types and anticipations of those which are to come after them.
This prophecy certainly differs from all others in the Sacred Text, in that it is spoken immediately by our Lord Himself through no other channel than His Sacred Humanity. Our Lord’s previsions could have had nothing partial or incomplete about them as they lay before His own mind, as may have been the case with the previsions of the prophets, to which the saying of St. Paul may be applied, ‘We know in part, and we prophesy in part.’1
But in delivering His prophecies He spoke in the manner in which former prophets of His had spoken before Him, and sometimes in their language. The prophecy is meant to adapt itself to the minds of those to whom it is delivered, as well as to the purpose for which it is given of warning and preparing them in all necessary manners for that which it predicts.
Our Lord's word's about the Temple
‘And Jesus being come out of the Temple, went away. And as He was going out of the Temple, one of the disciples saith to Him, Master, behold what manner of stones and what buildings are here! And some saying of the Temple, that it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts’
… a topic which might have been suggested by what had just been seen as He was sitting in the treasury…
‘… and His disciples came to show Him the buildings of the Temple. And Jesus answering said, Seest thou all these great buildings? Do you see all these things? Amen, I say to you, these things which you see, the days shall come in which there shall not be left a stone upon a stone that shall not be thrown down, that shall not be destroyed.’
These words of their Blessed Master must have recalled to the minds of the disciples those others which He had used a few days before, on the Day of Palms, when He had wept over Jerusalem, and had predicted in very circumstantial language the destruction of the city.
‘For the days shall come upon thee, and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side, and beat thee flat to the ground and thy children who are in thee, and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation.’
It was habitual with the Apostles to treasure up our Lord’s words, and this, which seems to have been almost the first pronouncement of the kind upon Jerusalem, must have sunk deep in their hearts, and perhaps have been the subject of surmise and conversation among them during the days that had passed since.
The desolation of the city had been foretold by Daniel2 in a passage which was, no doubt, much in the minds of the devout Jews of our Lord’s time, for it was in that prophecy that the time for the coming of the Messias had seemed to be fixed, just as in that of Micheas the place had been assigned for His Birth at Bethlehem.
This prophecy of Daniel ended with the prediction of the cutting off of the Messias and the destruction of the city. It was natural therefore for the disciples to ask about this when they had before their eyes what seemed to be so inconsistent with that prophecy in the splendid buildings of the Temple, which seemed to defy destruction.
Question of the four disciples
‘And when He was sitting on Mount Olivet, over against the Temple, they asked Him, the disciples came to Him privately…’
… and we are told by St. Mark that those who came to Him were four, apart from the others… ‘
‘… Peter and James and John and Andrew asked Him apart, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be, and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and when all these things shall begin to come to pass, and be fulfilled, and of the consummation of the world?’
The coming of our Lord, as is well known, is a phrase which is used in various senses in the two Testaments, and by our Lord Himself.
It sometimes means the time of death, sometimes some great event, as the destruction of Jerusalem, and sometimes the greatest event and destruction of all, the end of the world and the Day of Judgment.
In this context it cannot mean the day of death to any individual soul, because that day is to come without signs preceding it such as can be discerned publicly. But here the coming of our Lord is to have signs that go before it to warn those that are on the lookout.
We understand it in this prophecy to refer first to that event of which our Lord had more than once lately spoken to His disciples, that is, His coming to destroy the city and Temple of Jerusalem in punishment for the treatment He had received and was to receive at the hands of the nation, and also, as the last words of the question suggest, to the end of the world.
These two things being both included in the question, our Lord answers each, and we have now to consider what His reply teaches us concerning each.
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The Doom of Jerusalem
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1 Cor. xiii
Dan. ix. 26.