In the rosary, the fourth sorrowful mystery is confusing... Help!

[Skyhighblue34]

So Jesus is carrying the cross when he sees women crying for him. He say’s “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children, for indeed, the days are coming when people will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed.’ At that time people will say to the mountains, ‘Fall upon us!’ and to the hills. ‘Cover us!’ for if these things are done when the wood is green what will happen when it is dry?”

What does this mean?

 

[po18guy]

From the Haydock Bible Commentary: Weep not over me. If you knew the evils that threaten and must soon fall upon your city, upon yourselves, and upon your children, you would preserve your tears to deplore your own misfortunes. My death is for the good of mankind; but it will be fatal to your nation because you have been pleased to make it so. In the ruin of Jerusalem, which is at hand, happy shall they be who have no children. They shall save themselves the grief of seeing their sons and daughters perish miserably, and in some sort of suffering as many deaths as they have children to die. Calmet.

In the green wood: by which are signified persons of virtue and sanctity; as by the dry wood, the wicked, who bring forth no fruit, and who, like dry wood, are fit to be cast into the fire. Wi. — If they be thus cruel with me, how will they treat you!

 

[George_Stegmeir]

I do believe that it is a prediction of the Roman destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and their forcable removal and exile of the Jews from Israel and Judea in 70 A.dD. Jews wwere then forbidden, under pain of death, to return to Palestine until after the 7th Century A.D.

 

[JamesTheJust]

I think it’s a prophecy, in which Jesus is saying, “If you cry over one man being crucified, get ready for the future!” The Jews had immense suffering in store for them, a persecution by the Romans that would climax with the Destruction of the Temple. In those days, Jesus predicts, people will beg for the ground to swallow them up and wish they had never had children so that they wouldn’t have to see them suffer.

 

[Skyhighblue34]

ohhhhh okay, its making sense now. I thought he was saying one day women would stop giving birth to children or something like that.

 

[Simca]

In the green wood: by which are signified persons of virtue and sanctity; as by the dry wood, the wicked, who bring forth no fruit, and who, like dry wood, are fit to be cast into the fire. Wi. — If they be thus cruel with me, how will they treat you!

I also think that the Green Wood is speaking of the time when Jesus was in the world. The Word of God was plentiful - in fact The Word himself walked among men.

The Dry Wood reminds me of Amos 8:11 “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign LORD, "when I will send a famine through the land-- not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.

I think Jesus was saying, If the world did not believe him when he was here, when he spoke the Father’s word, when he raised the dead, healed the sick, etc., then how will they believe when all those miracles have ‘dried up’?

‘Blessed are those who do not see, but believe.’