How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!

 

 On that very day some Pharisees came, saying to Him, "Get out and depart from here, for Herod wants to kill You."  And He said to them, "Go, tell that fox, 'Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.'  Nevertheless I must journey today, tomorrow, and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish outside of Jerusalem.  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!  How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!  See!  Your house is left to you desolate; and assuredly, I say to you, you shall not see Me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!'"

 

- Luke 13:31-35 

 

Yesterday we read that Jesus said, "What is the kingdom of God like?  And to what shall I compare it?  It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and put in his garden; and it grew and became a large tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches."  And again He said, "To what shall I liken the kingdom of God?  It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened."  And He went through the cities and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem.  Then one said to Him, "Lord, are there few who are saved?"  And He said to them, "Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able.  When once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, Lord, open for us,' and He will answer and say to you, 'I do not know you, where you are from,' then you will begin to say, 'We ate and drank in your presence, and You taught in our streets.'  But He will say, 'I tell you I do not know you, where you are from.  Depart Me, all you workers of iniquity.'  There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and yourselves thrust out.  They will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and sit down in the kingdom of God.  And indeed there are last who will be first, and there are first who will be last."   

 On that very day some Pharisees came, saying to Him, "Get out and depart from here, for Herod wants to kill You."  And He said to them, "Go, tell that fox, 'Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.'"   As Herod Antipas is the ruler (tetrarch) of Galilee, this tells us that Jesus, although He has begun to journey toward Jerusalem, is still in Galilee.  It is also quite interesting that there are Pharisees who seek to protect Jesus from the one who rules for Rome.  Jesus' reply is bold; although He speaks in what is no doubt a riddle both to these Pharisees and to Herod when He refers to the third day.   He nevertheless asserts His power against the adversary, the evil one, and that He will complete His mission perfected.

"Nevertheless I must journey today, tomorrow, and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish outside of Jerusalem.  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!  How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!  See!  Your house is left to you desolate; and assuredly, I say to you, you shall not see Me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!'"  My study bible comments that this passage shows first that Christ is voluntarily going to His Passion, and second it shows His great love for Jerusalem despite its continual state of rebellion.  Finally, on display here is also Christ's foreknowledge that He will be received on the first Palm Sunday with the words "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!" (see 19:37-38).

Jesus speaks of His love for Jerusalem.  In today's reading we're given this extremely interesting, feminine image of Christ as a mother hen, who "gathers her brood under her wings."  This speaks of a tremendous love, a maternal protective love.  It is interesting to understand this image in these words as given to us by Jesus, and also to consider that throughout Christian history the image of the Virgin Mary as protector of the faithful, especially in times of war, has remained strong in both East and West.  For Byzantium, Mary, in a famous hymn, is called "Champion General."  This hymn was composed fter a famous incident in the tenth century, in which enemy armies, encamped and prepared to attack outside the gates of Constantinople, mysteriously changed their minds and simply left.   The city was unprotected at the time, as its army was fighting far away, so the people and religious leaders made supplications for intercession by Mary -- in the midst of which occurred a vision of her at fervent prayer for the Christian city.  In the Battle of Lepanto (which took place in what is now called Nafpaktos/Ναύπακτος in modern Greece) an alliance of Catholic states defended the West successfully against  Ottoman Armies, turning back the tide of Ottoman aggression.  This victory was credited to the Virgin Mary, to whom the Pope had ordered the people to pray for intercession through the use of the Rosary.  There are many other such instances in which the protection of a people has been ascribed to the protection of Mary as intercessor, as one who prays for the people to her Son Jesus.  Noteworthy indeed are the feminine images of protection for defensive victory in battle against a hostile aggressor, that perhaps begin here with Christ's image of Himself as mother hen who would so often have protected the brood of Jerusalem as her baby chicks, but they were not willing.  With hearts far away from Him, Jesus says, "Your house is left to you desolate," an image of emptiness and abandonment.  It suggests to me that, as full or empty as our hearts are with love of God, this is the fullness (or desolation) of our house.  At this stage, Christ has come in a long line of succession of prophets, to call the people back to God.  As Jesus says, Jerusalem is the city where the prophets were killed, and that stones the ones sent to her.  But He is the Son, and another will not be sent after Him.   The desolation to which He refers will manifest in the Siege of Jerusalem, which will take place in 70 AD, about a generation after Christ's crucifixion.  In the modern world, we do not often run across feminine images for protection against an enemy army.  But the whole history of Christianity has given us a different perspective in terms of God's protective and loving nature, starting with the image of the mother hen that Christ gives us here, and continuing until today as Churches East and West still call upon Mary for supplication during times of extreme peril, especially military in nature.  Let us be assured that our strength is in our faith, and the way of desolation is when we abandon that faith, and our hearts are no longer full of love for Christ and the grace and mercy that is His way.  Let us consider in times of trouble where our hearts must be full, so that our home is full and healthy with the promise of life and renewal.

How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!

 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.  Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.'  Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.  Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers' guilt.  Serpents, brood of vipers!  How can you escape the condemnation of hell?  Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes:  some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.  Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!  How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!  See!  Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!'"

- Matthew 23:27-39

Jesus is in the temple in Jerusalem, and it is Holy Week in our current gospel readings in Matthew.  He has begun His final public sermon, directed at the temple leadership, a great critique of their practices.  In yesterday's reading, He continued: "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers.  Therefore you will receive greater condemnation.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.  Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obliged to perform it.'  Fools and blind!  For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold?  And, 'Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it.'  Fools and blind!  For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift?  Therefore he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by all things on it.  He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells in it.  And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law:  justice and mercy and faith.  These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.  Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence.  Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also."

 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.  Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."    The original meaning of the word hypocrite was "actor."   In the ancient plays, that meant someone wearing a mask (hypocrite means literally "beneath a mask").  In yesterday's reading, Jesus spoke about the hypocrisy of these leaders, who practice outwardly to be observed by others, but inwardly do not concern themselves with the "weightier matters of the Law:  justice and mercy and faith."  Here His analogy takes full form:  they are like whitewashed tombs -- beautiful on the outside, but full of "dead men's bones and all uncleanness."

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.'  Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.  Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers' guilt.  Serpents, brood of vipers!  How can you escape the condemnation of hell?  Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes:  some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.  Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation."   The prophets of the Old Testament were those who spoke up, who warned repeatedly of corrupt practices, the neglect of justice and mercy, exploitation of the poor and helpless in violation of the faith.  Jesus speaks here Himself in a prophetic voice, denouncing the practices that allow for this kind of hypocrisy.  Here He likens the scribes and Pharisees of His time with those who killed the prophets for their word, for messages they didn't want to hear.  He prophesies also of the future martyrs who will come in His name, included in the line of those who have already been "sent" by the Lord in the history of Israel.   "Brood of vipers" is also used by John the Baptist for the Pharisees and Sadducees, as well as earlier by Jesus (see this link).  The phrase alludes to the ungodly nature of such behavior.  When Jesus prophesies that "all these things will come upon this generation," He's speaking about what is to come in Jerusalem.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!  How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!  See!  Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the nae of the LORD!'"   In this metaphor, we see a feminine image for Christ given by Jesus Himself:  that of a mother hen.  Some may suggest the image is for a partridge, commonly seen in the Near East with large broods of chicks (and an inspiration for the "partridge in a pear tree" symbolism in the carol).  The image is one of a protective mother rejected by her children.  My study bible says that God's deepest desire is the reconciliation of His people, but most do not want Him.  The desolate house, it says, refers to both the temple and to the nation itself.  House can be used to mean "family" or "tribe."  My study bible says, "Both this temple and the nation will be without God's presence once Christ departs."   In this image, the prophetic voice is one of love, correcting and warning of danger.

Although the main focus of our readings in this last public sermon of Jesus is on the prophetic voice, what really intrigues me is the feminine image of the mother bird who wants to shelter all her chicks.  It gives us a lot to think about.   Jesus' whole life, and the lives of saints, teach us something important about qualities of character.  A well-balanced person adapts qualities that we tend to associate with one gender or another:   both courage and compassion, for example.  Jesus' metaphor teaches us something essential to the understanding of prophetic voice:  that correction, as part of God's work, is part of being a truly loving Parent to us all.  The mother hen that wants to gather and protect all her chicks under her wings is the image of Christ who will also give His life for us:  everything is done out of love for God's people.  The Old Testament is very clear about this, and Christ teaches us also that correction is good, while emphasizing our own flaws as being our essential first focus ("First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye" - see Matthew 7:3-5).  This image of the mother hen giving wise advice in an attempt to protect her children is related to another "feminine" image of Christ held from the earliest times in the Church:  that of Sophia, or Wisdom.  The great St. Sophia cathedral of Constantinople (present day Istanbul) is understood as Christ, the Wisdom of the Lord in the Old Testament.  All of this teaches us not to fear Christ's discernment or judgment, nor His prophetic voice -- even the same voice that pronounces "woe" for these religious hypocrites.  Everything He does, including warning us of the pitfalls of false roads, is done out of love.  Calling out these leaders' hypocrisy is still a way of warning them of what is to come, and into what disaster they are leading the people, even though He seems certain now, in this final public sermon, that they will not change.  It's important that we understand God's all-encompassing love -- particularly through this tender image of the mother hen with her brood -- as that which also warns and corrects, saves us from danger, encouraging us to clean up our own internal acts (that "plank" in our own eye) so that we are not blind, another word He uses for the Pharisees and scribes ("blind guides" He called them in yesterday's reading, above).   Just as we must balance our image of Christ as Son and King with the "mother hen," and with the man of infinite compassion, of sympathy and friendship for women, the one who calls us to see Him in "the least of these," so we must also balance our understanding of love within His vision and teachings.  We don't love someone by telling them everything they do is always perfect, but correction is always given with love.  Jesus' corrections never use manipulation or phony guilt; but He always gives us the truth with love.  Love and truth are inseparable; and so is forgiveness inseparable from repentance, turning back to Him.  Let us remember that we are all called to walk this path, His Way.  It's all one of a whole, of love and truth, of correction and nurturing, and infinite grace with the gift of wisdom (who is justified by all her children).  Too often, it's the way of the world to ridicule or revile.  True correction, given with love, and teaching true humility,  is something altogether different, and is part of the love we learn from Him.   

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!

 Christ Pantocrator/Logos (Deesis - Supplication), detail, Hagia Sophia

On that very day some Pharisees came, saying to Him, "Get out and depart from here, for Herod wants to kill You."  And He said to them, "Go tell that fox, 'Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.'  Nevertheless I must journey today, tomorrow, and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish outside of Jerusalem.  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!  How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!  See!  Your house is left to you desolate; and assuredly, I say to you, you shall not see Me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!'"

- Luke 13:31-35

Yesterday, we read that Jesus said, "What is the kingdom of God like?  And to what shall I compare it?   It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and put in his garden; and it grew and became a large tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches."  And again He said, "To whom shall I liken the kingdom of God?  It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened."  And He went through the cities and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem.  Then one said to Him, "Lord, are there few who are saved?"  And He said to them, "Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able.  When once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, Lord, open for us,' and He will answer and say to you, 'I do not know you, where you are from,' then you will begin to say, 'We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.'  But He will say, 'I tell you I do not know you, where you are from.  Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.'  There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and yourselves thrust out.  They will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and sit down in the kingdom of God.  And indeed there are last who will be first, and there are first who will be last."

On that very day some Pharisees came, saying to Him, "Get out and depart from here, for Herod wants to kill You."  And He said to them, "Go tell that fox, 'Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.'  Nevertheless I must journey today, tomorrow, and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish outside of Jerusalem.  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!  How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!  See!  Your house is left to you desolate; and assuredly, I say to you, you shall not see Me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!'"    My study bible says of today's reading:  "This passage shows (1) Christ voluntarily going to His Passion, (2)  His great love for Jerusalem in spite of its continual state of rebellion, and (3)  His foreknowledge of how He will be received on the first Palm Sunday."

Jesus' lament over Jerusalem tells us of His great love for the people.  All of His recent warnings about Judgment, about the signs of the time, have been stark admonitions given out of love and the deep longing to save.  He knows what is going to happen when He reaches Jerusalem, and He knows what the Passion will hold.  Nevertheless, He laments -- not for Himself, but for the people who are going to reject Him.  We are given a maternal image of Jesus here:  a hen who gathers her brood protectively under her wings.  Some people associate a partridge with this portrayal of Christ from His own example (a partridge is a bird with large broods, her chicks near her at all times).  Whatever way we look at His teaching and analogy for His feelings, we must read love and care, and a willingness to sacrifice for those whom He loves.  His lament is for those who will put Him to death.  Nothing can change His love.  He envisions a house desolate as a result, and it is a devastating understanding.  So profound is this love that Jesus gives a very maternal, literally feminine image (mother hen) of His desire to care for His children.  It turns us back to the understanding that in God there is no gender, and in a truly god-like person we share many characteristics that are assigned to both genders as distinctive.  The courage of this picture of the protective mother is usually assigned as a "masculine" trait, but Christ calls each of us to both "masculine" and "feminine" virtues.  Finally, in the image of the mother hen we must see a vision for the Church.  Jesus remains this great maternal image in that it is His Church that is to be the shelter for all of us together.  Protective, maternal, and nurturing, the Church is supposed to be the gathering place for each of us, with all of our uniquenesses and differences, every charism.  If you look at the architecture of the ancient church of Hagia Sophia (Saint Sophia, or more truly Holy Wisdom), you will see its broad round dome.  Although the church was staggeringly impressive in its conception, beauty, size, and interior decoration, the message is clear from the architecture:  it's a great broad sheltered gathering place, the feminine image of the mother that gathers her children in the humble image of a dome.  To the Greek Orthodox, Holy Wisdom is Logos; the feminine word Sophia (meaning "Wisdom") is also a name of the One we call the Son.  The icon above is Logos - Christ Pantocrator (Almighty), the risen Lord who is the Son.  Again, there is no gender in God as the Persons of the Trinity (that's in contrast to His Incarnation as Jesus, a male human being).  In modern photos of the Hagia Sophia you will see also minarets built by Ottoman conquerors who for a time converted the Church to a mosque.  (There are modern day calls in Turkey to once again turn it into a mosque.  It is currently a museum.)  These minarets stand in stark contrast to the conceived architecture of the Church.  It gives us an idea of the Protection of Christ, a concept so important to the Church from its earliest centuries, wherein the beautiful mosaic of Christ as child with Mary also becomes yet another icon of protection.  In all of these images, we get the sense of Christ's love, mirrored also in the images of His human mother, Mary, and the love and protection she expresses for her child, and for so many Christians, as the one who prays with us.  In my icon page, you can see several example of this loving gaze.  Let us remember Jesus' own words describing His lament over His children who will lose by refusing what He offers, what He brings to the world as gift, pure grace.  It's a lament for the whole history of Israel, the people of God, to whom also have been sent prophets.  Let us not forget the dignity in His protection, His lament, His great love for each of us.  Protection in the context of this reading is above all else a spiritual protection, something He conferred on His disciples.  It doesn't mean our worldly lives are perfect; for martyrs life provides great challenges, and we are all called to "witness."  But this protection works within, for the integrity of our souls and our understanding of ourselves, the unity of love we have with God, in Christ.

You are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness

 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.  Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.'   Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.  Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers' guilt.  Serpents, brood of vipers!  How can you escape the condemnation of hell?  Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes, some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.  Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!  How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!  See!  Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!'"

- Matthew 23:27-39

Over the course of the past two days, we've been reading Jesus' critique of the Pharisees and their practices.  See They bind heavy burdens hard to bear; and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers for the beginning of this discourse in the temple at Jerusalem.  Yesterday, we read Jesus' continuation:  "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers.  Therefore you will receive greater condemnation.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees!  For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.   Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obliged to perform it.'  Fools and blind!  For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold?  And, 'Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it.'  Fools and blind!  For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift?  Therefore he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by all things on it.  He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells in it.  And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law:  justice and mercy and faith.  These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.  Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!   Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence.  Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also."

 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.  Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."  Jesus continues His thoughts from yesterday, regarding the difference between the inner life and the external life (and its focus) in the ways these Pharisees are living and practicing their faith.  The great difference between internal reality and external appearance adds to the understanding of what hypocrisy is here.  His focus, from yesterday's reading, is on the "inside of the cup and dish" -- a metaphor for ourselves.

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.'   Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.  Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers' guilt.  Serpents, brood of vipers!  How can you escape the condemnation of hell?  Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes, some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.  Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation."  What I find interesting about this passage is the form of urgency of the messages of the prophets, wise men, and scribes sent by Christ:  they come to save people from their own bad habits and practices -- to save those who are perishing, even the very ones who persecute, scourge, and kill and crucify them.  The present inheritors of the places of those who persecuted the prophets of the past are the very ones who claim they would not have done so:  and yet are about to do the same to Him (and others who follow).

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!  How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!  See!  Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!'"  This image of Christ as "mother hen" is a very important one, because in it we see His real response as One who is sent.  He loves the people He is addressing, and they have failed so in their willingness (or unwillingness) to heed anything He has to teach.  It's not a failure of love on His part, but a failure in the response to love ("you were not willing").   The time is up, His mission is complete.  He will leave them (take His exodus) at their own hands.

It's interesting to think of how Christ phrases the role of the prophets and saints who are sent to those who persecute them.  The real "energy" behind the sending is just that:  to prevent their perishing, to save those who are their persecutors.  Although God's mercy is infinite, what we find (in my opinion) through the Gospels is that there is a sense in which this mercy can be exhausted, and that is through our own choices not to hear, not to care, not to return and try to change.  I believe that the "fire of love" -- in the image, perhaps, of the "fiery ones," the angels of God (most specifically, those who sing the Thrice Holy hymn, and are always in worship at God's throne) -- is a fire of love that seeks to purify, to "burn away" that which is not like the fire and cannot survive in that fire.  In this fire of love that is pure holiness we find images that are part of the miraculous lives of saints, or even more powerfully, the burning bush which was not consumed, in which Moses encounters holiness, the I AM of God.  The burning bush, for Christians, came to be a symbol for Mary:  she who was visited by the Holy Spirit, but in her purity, never consumed.   Purity, in Mary, is a profound inner spirituality, a kind of sense of the internal and external being one and the same, the opposite of hypocrisy.  This sense of purity conjures up the image of the pearl of great price.   Before modern innovations such as cultured pearls, a pearl found in nature was one of pure nacre:  something that was the same on the inside as the outside.  Again, an image that is the opposite of what Jesus describes here when He speaks of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, those who are like "whitewashed tombs" but are internally full of death and decay and "uncleanness."  Let us consider, then, what the point of "holy fire" is:  it appears in the saints to heal and purify, to have the effect of sanctifying, it lives in those who can stand in it and not be consumed.  Just as a test for gold reveals impurities that burn in fire, this sense of holiness is that which conveys a kind of purity in which the fire of love only finds that which is like itself.  In that sense, an image of that which will perish is one in which no love is found in it, no mercy, no sense of wanting to be like God at all.  That is, no heeding of the call to turn back toward God; perhaps a sense that God is absent and will not see, particularly in those who wish to have all control themselves  (see the parable of the wicked vinedressers).  All this is to say that Jesus' criticism of the Pharisees isn't just for the Pharisees, but for all of us, for each of us.  It's a way of understanding where we don't want to go, where we lose our way, and go the opposite direction of God's love and God's holy fire.  Remember the image of the purity of body, soul and spirit in Mary -- or the pearl that is pure in the most profound sense of that word, with no inconsistency.  This doesn't mean we are finished at some point, but rather that we are consistently on the journey of faith; we ask for the fire of God's love to show us the way to be like God, to grow in our understanding of that love and how we practice it and live it, and to allow it to do its work in us.  That's just the path we want to be on.