Fourth Sunday of Lent (Laetare Sunday)

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
15th March 2015

Evil must be hated as intensely as good is loved. Jesus loved good. With all the vehemence of His human heart, and with the infinity of His Divine nature, He loved it. What could He do? How could His pure eye contemplate these hypocrites, the Pharisees, these men of gold and lip praise, these traitors? What could He set up in opposition to their shifty ways, which tended to stifle His work, and to close to others those gates of Heaven through which they themselves would not enter? He could do but one thing - unmask them, and, when the time came, set His foot on this nest of vipers, even at the risk of thereby meeting His own death.

This is the explanation of those expressions of anger that the Gospel relates concerning Jesus. There is naught thereat to be scandalised; rather would there be occasion for scandal were it not so, for it was His desire for the salvation of men that caused Him to condemn those who were obstacles in His path.

If He had pity for those who did wrong through weakness, He had only indignation against those who defended evil, who cultivated it, systematised it, turned it to profit. He hated their theories and conduct with a hatred born of His love of good, with a hatred that could cause the mild Lamb of God to be fierce as the eagle and furious as the lion. Yes, truly it was love, love of His children, that roused in Him those transports of rage against any who would rob Him of their souls.

Flaming furnace of love, whence proceeded a devouring fire, His words derived their heat from the burning coals of Divine charity. But how terrible those words were! How terrifying His anathemas! At times His actions of anger might even seem exaggerated, as, for example, when He made a whip of little cords and expelled the buyers and sellers from the Temple. He overwhelmed the Pharisees, denounced them before God and man, and threatened them with terrible vengeance in His name. It was the cry of that love strong as death, and of that jealousy hard as hell spoken of in the Canticle. And all these threats and all the fierce anger of His Divine manhood terminated in that piteous appeal of outraged love: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that kills the prophets, and stones them that are sent to thee, how often would I have gathered thy children as the bird doth her brood under her wings, and thou wouldst not? Behold your house shall be left to you desolate" (Luke 13).

The indignation of Jesus was one of His glories and His magnitudes, for He used it only in defence of justice and truth. His example has been followed in His Church, and it explains more than one crisis in the history of Christian civilisation. The scribes and Pharisees still live; nor is Jesus Christ dead: He lives and acts in the Church which He founded. The struggle is always going on, and the reason is the same. Long live truth, even when it wounds us.