luke 23:28-31

[mark_a]

28 Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children, 29 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.’ 30 At that time people will say to the mountains, ‘Fall upon us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’ 31 for if these things are done when the wood is green what will happen when it is dry?”

Please share your thoughts about what this means.Thanks.

 

[NHInsider]

Looking back it appears to have been a dirge or warning about the coming siege of Jerusalem by the Romans.

 

[Robbinson]

Looking back it appears to have been a dirge or warning about the coming siege of Jerusalem by the Romans.

Agreed. This was in fact the most immediate fulfillment. I might also speak to the end time tribulation.

 

[bkayw]

The Seleucid Empire was vicious against the Jews. Jews regained rule & worship for a short time with the Maccabees but were overtaken by the Roman Empire.

In 70, the Romans brutally attacked the Jews, killed over 1 million of them, destroyed the Temple, stole the Temple funds, took the gold Menorah and 100,000 Jews as slaves back to Rome.

Hilter’s extermination camps killed at least 6 million Jews.

There are 7.5 million Jews in Israel today. Their greatest threat today comes radical Islam.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

In discussing the Eighth Station, where this occurs, Father Nesbit notes that the Women are weeping over Jesus’s state, the result of sin. He is telling them to weep over the sins that brought this about. We still need to learn this lesson.

We weep over homosexual “marriage”; better that we should repent the divorce and contraception by which heterosexuals destroyed the true concept of marriage.

We weep over the incidences of abuse in the Church. Better that we should weep over the inaction by the leaders who allowed this go on while they counseled and treated the abusers. And much better that we should weep over our rejection of Humanae Vitae and insistence on having leaders who would who would counsel and encourage us, rather than call a sin a sin. We insisted on leaders who would use pastoral rather than judicial cures.

If you do LOTH note Psalm 95 in the Invitatory:

O that today you would hearken to his voice! 8 Harden not your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, 9 when your fathers tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. 10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people who err in heart, and they do not regard my ways.” 11 Therefore I swore in my anger that they should not enter my rest.

Note that Humanae Vitae was issued 42 years ago. Things have not improved in that 40 years.

 

[NeedImprovement]

I see it quite clearly as a prophecy about our present day abomination of abortion.

Being childless was seen as a curse or punishment. In sacred scripture we can trace it right from Sarah in Genesis through Rebekah , Rachel and Hannah, all the way to St John the Baptist’s mother Elizabeth,who, after conceiving says [Luke 1:25]

“The Lord has seen fit to remove my reproach among men” or, as rendered by the NAB :

“So has the Lord done for me at a time when he has seen fit to take away my disgrace before others.”

I believe the words “… people will say to the mountains, ‘Fall upon us!’ and to the hills, 'Cover us!” , are expressing sentiment similar to: “Lord save us or preserve us from what is to come [after abortion if it does not abate] ; or , “Who can endure what is about to befall us next ?”
Compare those verses to Hosea10:8 and Revelation 6:16

Anyone aware of the utter magnitude of abortion has surely at one time or another heard those echoes in their hearts. In my country (Canada) alone, many more children are slain in the wombs of their mothers in two weeks, than the total of all those who perished in 911 . In 2008, this country’s Governor General’s office awarded Canada’s highest civilian honour – **The Order of Canada **, to the man most responsible for promoting, procuring and performing abortions here ; … for his (Ahem) “…work in the field of reproductive health alternatives for women.” And only a few months ago some of the G8 countries were trying to have abortion technology exported to third world countries as a “health initiative” . It didn’t happen, but “abortion” ‘ s little brother – contraception made his way in there …

“Happy are the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed.”

Here :”…for if these things are done when the wood is green what will happen when it is dry?" , I believe “these things” refers to the things they were doing to our Lord during His Passion. Subsequently I see “when the wood is green” as our Lord is saying, “When I am still walking among you”

We are presently living “*when the wood is *dry” , or, as I see it, “long after our Blessed Lord walked among us as a man.”

I believe our Lord was telling the holy women , in their day when being childless was looked upon as a curse or punishment, that a day will actually come when being barren/childless will be extolled as something “good” , and having a child will be seen as a curse, so to speak…

Or as the unsettlingly congruent words of Presdent Obama himself put it : “being punished with a baby”.

It isn’t rocket science. I think that particular prophecy of our Lord is being fulfilled in our present day… in a most lamentable way.

 

[NeedImprovement]

… He is telling them to weep over the sins that brought this about. We still need to learn this lesson.

We weep over homosexual “marriage”; better that we should repent the divorce and contraception by which heterosexuals destroyed the true concept of marriage.

We weep over the incidences of abuse in the Church. Better that we should weep over the inaction by the leaders who allowed this go on while they counseled and treated the abusers. And much better that we should weep over our rejection of Humanae Vitae and insistence on having leaders who would who would counsel and encourage us, rather than call a sin a sin. We insisted on leaders who would use pastoral rather than judicial cures.

If you do LOTH note Psalm 95 in the Invitatory: Note that Humanae Vitae was issued 42 years ago. Things have not improved in that 40 years.

You made your way right to the heart of the matter Joe. What you say can easily be applied to my previous post as well :

We would do well to weep over what has brought abortion about - the desire of too many of us to have all the sex we want without any of the responsibility … almost as if we were saying to our governments, “Tell us it’s okay to do this.”

 

[mark_a]

Looking back it appears to have been a dirge or warning about the coming siege of Jerusalem by the Romans.

I’m not sure I understand. Was Jesus saying that mothers would be fortunate not to see their children suffer?