Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 28–32

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you, how often I wanted to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house will be left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me from now on until you say: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

It is worth asking how the Saviour, speaking before hearers among whom were scribes and Pharisees, who prided themselves on knowing carefully the things of the law and the prophets, could say that Jerusalem had killed the prophets and stoned those sent to her, when no such history is clearly set out in the old Scriptures that were read in their synagogues. We read that Jeremiah was thrown into a pit of mud, yet not killed in Jerusalem. Nor do we read, as far as my memory suggests, that Isaiah, or Ezekiel, or any of the prophets suffered anything of the kind. But searching the second book of Chronicles, where much is written about famous prophets, I find that Asa in anger put the prophet Hanani, who rebuked him, in prison, yet did nothing more to him. And Ahab ordered Micaiah, who prophesied against him, to go into the prison house and eat the bread of affliction, yet did not kill him. We read of one only who was stoned, Zechariah son of Jehoiada the priest, who rebuked the people. We do not find, then, that more prophets were killed or stoned in Jerusalem, apart from what I said, those sent to Jerusalem. We must therefore see whether perhaps we ought to demonstrate Christ's word from the more secret books current among the Jews; and not only Christ's word, but also that of his disciples, of Stephen the martyr and of Paul the apostle. For Stephen says thus: “Stiff-necked, and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit, as your fathers did. Which of the prophets did they not persecute? And they killed those who announced the coming of the Righteous One, of whom you have now become betrayers and murderers.” And after this they drove him out of the city and stoned Stephen as he cried out and spoke. And Paul in the first letter to the Thessalonians says this about the killing of the prophets: “You became imitators of the churches of God which are in Judaea in Christ Jesus, for you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and persecuted us, and do not please God.” And to the Hebrews thus: “They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they died by the sword. They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute and afflicted, clothed in sorrows, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes of the earth.” It is related, then, in Scriptures that are not public, that Isaiah was sawn in two, and that Zechariah was killed, and Ezekiel. And I think it was Elijah who went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, who wandered in the desert and in the mountains. But suppose someone rejects the letter to the Hebrews as not Paul's, and also casts aside the secret writing of Isaiah: what will he do with the words of Stephen, or of Paul to the Thessalonians, spoken about the slain prophets, or with those of our Lord himself? Or how will he reject what Paul brought forward to Timothy, saying: “As Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so these too resist the truth”? For we do not know in the canonical books a history of Jannes and Jambres resisting Moses. And if I look at what is set down in the first letter to the Corinthians, “What eye has not seen, nor ear heard,” will anyone be able to reject all these things? We have said all this in examining the saying, not unaware that many secret writings were produced by certain ungodly people who speak iniquity on high; and some use fictions of the Hypsistarians, others those of Basilides. We must therefore consider carefully, so that we neither receive all the secret writings current under the names of the saints, because of the Jews, who perhaps fabricated some things to destroy the truth of our Scriptures, confirming false doctrines, nor reject all those that serve to demonstrate our Scriptures. It belongs to a great man, then, to hear and fulfil what is said: “Test all things; hold fast what is good.” Yet, for the sake of those who cannot, like money-changers, discern among words which are to be held true and which false, and cannot guard themselves carefully so as to keep the true within themselves and abstain from every form of evil, no one ought to use books outside the canonical Scriptures to confirm doctrines. Yet one who receives the letter to the Hebrews as a letter of Paul says that we ought not always to refer plurals to many persons. For not many were sawn in two, but Isaiah alone; nor were many stoned, but only Zechariah son of Jehoiada; nor many slain by the sword, but Zechariah son of Barachiah; and Elijah went in sheepskins and goatskins; and other things likewise. Further, let us inquire into what is written in Luke, where the Lord says, “For it cannot be that a prophet should perish outside Jerusalem.” If, then, it cannot be that a prophet should perish, that is, be killed, outside Jerusalem, you will ask whether after the destruction of Jerusalem there is no longer any prophet, lest a prophet killed outside Jerusalem should show Christ's word to be false. But if the Scriptures compel us, because of Agabus and the daughters of Philip the evangelist, and not because of the false prophets of Phrygia, let us inquire whether perhaps every righteous man is in Jerusalem and not outside Jerusalem, since it cannot be that one who is outside Jerusalem is drawn into sufferings for the word. But we must see how Jerusalem kills the prophets. I think that, as people commonly say, “the city cried out,” as if it were said, those who are in the city; and again, “the city went out to meet him,” that is, those who are in the city; so “Jerusalem kills the prophets,” that is, those who were in Jerusalem, on whose account it is said that Jerusalem killed the prophets. And if the citizens are put for the city, the question arises again: who are to be called the children of Jerusalem, of whom it is said, “How often I wanted to gather your children”? We say that the successors of citizens are always called the children of those before them. But the Jerusalem which is free from the slavery of sin, which is above in its way of life, which is also our mother, does not kill the prophets nor stone those sent to her. It is another matter that, after the likeness of that Jerusalem which killed and stoned the prophets, there are often in this Jerusalem certain unskilled people who do not fear God, who, as far as lies in them, kill and stone with words uttered without judgment men advanced in word and life, who do not seek to depart from the rule of the churches but are suspected because of the depth of their teachings by those who are accustomed to say new things and do not attend to the sound word of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord, then, says to Jerusalem, killer and stoner of the prophets: “How often I wanted to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not!” How does the Lord Jesus here, as one who often wished to gather the Jews but did not gather them because of the stubbornness of those unwilling to believe, say “How often I wanted,” when it is plain that he taught the Jews in the body once? But Christ was always present, not only in bodily presence but also in his substance, both in Moses and in the prophets, and still more in the angels who minister to human salvation, and in each generation; and so “How often I wanted” is fulfilled. For in each generation he always wished and hastened to accomplish the will of the Father in them; even though he was not set in the body, as now at the end of the ages, yet he always hastened to gather the children of Jerusalem. For the words of him who wished to gather the children of Jerusalem are contained in the law and the prophets; and of him it is written: “Spreading out his wings he took them and received them on his shoulders.” And it is the daily work of Christ to gather the children of Jerusalem, about whom much is said in Isaiah and the other prophets; and daily the Son of God gathers the scattered children of God, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But if anyone has not been gathered by him, he will be judged as one who would not be gathered by him. For “the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost,” and he died “not for the nation alone, but to gather into one the scattered children of God.” To the Jews, who were the children of that Jerusalem which was below, he uttered a threat, saying to those who would not be gathered under his wings, “Behold, now your house will be left to you desolate.” And Christ seems always to threaten those who would not be gathered under his wings and to say, “Behold, now your house will be left to you desolate,” that is, your soul and body. For not only the body but also the soul of sinners is left desolate; and as in a desert, foxes make their holes in them, and serpents, the brood of vipers, their lairs. And he says to those who would not be gathered to him: “You will not see me from now on until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” And the Jews did not see Christ then; for he was not seen by them when he rose from the dead as before, but only by the fathers, made worthy by judgment and grace. And until, understanding their own desolation, they repent and say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” they will not see the Son of God, nor see his Word, nor contemplate the beauty of the wisdom of God. And if any of us, though he wished to be gathered under Christ's wings, has by evil works refused to be gathered under his wings, he will no longer see the Word of God, especially from the time when he flees, by act rather than by body, him who gathers him day by day; and he will not see the beauty of the Word, that is, Christ, until he turns and repents of his evil purpose and says, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” For then the blessed Word of God and the blessed wisdom of God comes in the name of God the Father upon the heart of a man, when someone has turned to God.

“And Jesus went out of the temple and was going away. And his disciples came to him to show him the buildings of the temple. But Jesus answered and said to them: Do you see all these things? Truly I say to you, there will not be left here stone upon stone that will not be thrown down.”

After Christ had foretold all that was to come upon Jerusalem, he went out of the temple, he who had preserved the temple from falling as long as he was in it. As long as the Word was among the Jews and did not take the kingdom of God away from them, so long the temple stood and the affairs of the Jews were safe. But after, according to his word, “The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation producing its fruit,” he took away the kingdom of God and gave it to the Gentiles, then both Jesus and the kingdom of God came to be among the Gentiles. Hence from then on neither Jesus nor the kingdom of God is held among the Jews, because they have been left like a booth in a vineyard, and like a hut in a cucumber field, and like a besieged city, because of the crime they committed against Christ. And everyone who receives the word of God is a temple of God, so that it may rightly be said to him: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you?” Each one, then, being a holy temple of God because of the Spirit of God dwelling in him, if he sins, becomes himself the cause of his own desolation, so that Christ goes out from him; so that he who was before a temple of the Son of God afterwards becomes a desolate house, so that there is not left in him, of all his teachings and the buildings of a good life, a stone upon a stone that is not thrown down. Therefore, remembering the history of the desolation of Jerusalem, we must take care for ourselves, lest Christ go out of the temple that is in us, so that the buildings of our temple may remain safe, adorned with stones and gifts, so that those who see the buildings that are in us may say in wonder, “See what stones and what buildings!” It is worth looking into this too: how, as far as the text goes, the disciples speak thus to Jesus and show him the buildings of stone, as though he had never seen the temple itself but had first arrived from elsewhere as a stranger. To this we must answer as follows: since Christ, prophesying above its future ruin and desolation, uttered this threat, “Behold, now your house will be left to you desolate,” the disciples, hearing it, marvelled that such and so great a building of the temple should be reduced to nothing; therefore they say to Jesus, as another evangelist says more plainly, “Teacher, see what stones and what buildings!”, evidently to bend him to mercy for that place, so that he would not do what he had threatened.

Let these things be said in the bodily sense. Figuratively, in this way. Since the structure of human nature has been made admirable, namely as a temple of God and of his Word, the disciples and the other saints, not only then but now too, acknowledging the wonderful works of God towards the human creature, intercede before the face of Christ and appeal to Christ not to desert the human race because of their sins, but rather that his wonderful works may move him to forgiveness more than their iniquity to anger. Another way: as that temple was not destroyed all at once but little by little as time went on, so also every man who receives the word of God into himself is a temple. And if after sin he has not fallen away wholly from the word of God, but still preserves in part the traces of faith and of the religion of God's commandments in himself, he is a temple partly destroyed and partly standing. But one who, after he has sinned, has no care for himself, but always runs away from the faith and from the life that is according to the Gospel, is diminished little by little until he withdraws wholly from the living God; he is the temple in which there is not left a stone of doctrine upon a stone of God's commandments that is not thrown down. We must take care for ourselves, then, that every building of godliness in us may endure intact, so that, adorned with the stones of saving doctrines and decorated with the gifts of good works, we may hold within us the power of God, and glory, and Christ, who is the Word and the Wisdom of God.

Someone introduces a third explanation of this kind: that the temple of God built by the composition of signifying words was the whole Scripture of the Old Testament, constructed, that is, according to the history. Those who built it, Moses and the prophets, by the arrangement of letters and the ordering of sayings, built it to be admired by all for the beauty of its stones, that is, of its chosen sayings, and for the gifts of its praiseworthy senses. This the disciples show to Jesus, taking up all the Scriptures; to whom Christ answered, saying that this bodily and first edition must be destroyed by the Word, so that a more divine and more mystical temple of another Scripture may be built. That Scripture is a temple has been explained by someone before us. And since he who opposes and exalts himself above everything that is called God, who sits in the temple of God, the Antichrist, is the false word found in the Scriptures, which feigns the truth, bringing forth testimonies for ungodly doctrines from the Scriptures to please those who are unwilling to be pleased in any other way, he is the one who opposes, and sits on the seat of the Scriptures and on their building, showing himself as though he were God. And one can always see the words of the heresies, antichrists sitting in the temple of the Scriptures, wishing to please their hearers from the Scriptures themselves, as though each of them were himself God the Word in the Scriptures.

“And as he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, his disciples came to him privately, saying: Tell us, when will these things be, and what is the sign of your coming and of the consummation of the age?”

Jesus, having gone out of the temple after speaking about it, came to the Mount of Olives and sat there with his disciples. I think the Mount of Olives is a mystery of the Church from the Gentiles, in which are planted olive trees, each of which can say, “But I am like a fruitful olive tree in the house of God.” And perhaps on this Mount of Olives too the roots are of the good olive tree, while the branches of the wild olive have been grafted in the place of the branches cut off for unbelief. The husbandman sitting on the Mount of Olives is the Word of God established in the Church, Christ, who always grafts the branches of the wild olive into the good olive tree of the fathers, of Moses and the prophets, so that, receiving richness from the holy prophets by carefully understanding and receiving their sense, and Christ who is prophesied by them, they may bear abundant fruit, richer, that is, than the earlier olive trees, which were struck down because of the curse that was in the law, so that they cannot be of use. After this we must consider that, of the disciples who came to Jesus, some come to him privately, having in this very thing greater confidence with him as members of his household, as when they asked him for the solution of the parables; while others asked him not privately but in common. Note further the difference between these: sometimes Pharisees come, whether testing him or asking in whatever way, and sometimes others desiring to learn; yet none from the multitude ever comes privately. And perhaps to this day those who have taken up an outstanding life, and for this reason have confidence before Christ, having something more than those who come to Jesus from the common faith, say to him: “Tell us, when will these things be?”, the things, that is, of which he said, “There will not stand here stone upon stone that will not be thrown down.” And they wish to learn not only this but also the sign of Christ's coming and of the consummation of the age; and they ask two things of him, the sign of his coming and of the consummation of the age. The coming of the Son of God and the consummation of the age, then, is believed in many, but especially in those who pursue a finer life. And there is another way to see Christ's twofold coming, that is, the coming of the Word into the soul. At first those who are untaught and are then beginning to know Christ, because they cannot see the brightness of his beauty, say: “We saw him, and he had no form or comeliness, but his appearance was without honour.” The dishonoured appearance of the Word is the foolish preaching about Christ, when we preach Christ born and crucified. But the second coming of Christ is in perfect men, of whom the steward of his word says: “But we speak wisdom among the perfect.” These perfect ones have become lovers of his beauty, and ask the Word to gird on his rational sword and place it over the mystery of his fleshly birth, which is called mystically the thigh. For such disciples praise the beauty and comeliness of the Word; and to this second coming is joined the consummation of the age in the man who is coming to perfection and says: “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” For if the world has been crucified to the righteous, those to whom the world has been crucified, for them the consummation of the world has also come about. Necessarily, then, those who have the confidence to approach Christ privately, if they wish to learn the sign of Christ's coming and of the consummation of the age, should show themselves worthy to see his second coming and, in the sense we have given, the consummation of the age.