Volume 2

The Pharisees 257
word him that is weary: He hath opened His ears to Him in
the morning to hear His commands, and He hath not
resisted." The Pharisees took these words as foolish selfpraise,
though they were ravished by His preaching, and
said to one another at the end of it: "Never before has any
Prophet so taught!" They whispered, nevertheless, some
malicious remarks into one another's ears. Jesus went on
with the explanation of this passage: "I have given My body
to the strikers, and My cheeks to them that plucked them,"
applying it to the persecutions that He had already endured
and to what He had still to suffer. He spoke of the ill-treatment
He had received at Nazareth, saying: "Let him who
can condemn Me, come forward!" His enemies, He said,
would grow old and come to naught in their vain teachings,
the Judge would come upon them. The godly would hear
His voice, while the ignorant, the unenlightened should call
to God and hope in Him. The Day of Judgment would
come, and they that had kindled the fire would go to ruin.!
This passage, also, Jesus explained of the destruction of the
Jewish people and Jerusalem.
The Pharisees had not a word to reply. They listened in
silence, transported by His words, though occasionally
whispering a jeering remark into their neighbor's ear. Jesus
then explained something from Moses as He always did at
the termination of His sermons, and added a parable, which
He addressed more particularly to the disciples and to the
faithless young Scribe of Nazareth. The parable was that of
the talent put out at interest, for the young Scribe was vain
of his acquirements. He was humbled interiorly by it, but
not improved. Jesus related the parable in terms similar to,
though not quite the same as those given in the Gospel.
In front of the synagogue, Jesus cured the sick on the
streets, and then went with His disciples to Peter's outside
the city gate. Nathaniel Chased and the bridegroom, also
Thaddeus, had come hither from Cana for this Sabbath.
Thaddeus was often in Capharnaum, for he travelled a