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380
ters treating of the Lessons of the Office during the
last months of the year.
The liturgy for this ninth Sunday is characterized by
its general tendency to arouse in our souls PITY for
the misfortunes of the deicide JERUSALEM. This is
more particularly evidenced in the Gospel of the
Mass which is taken from Saint Luke, in which we
read that on the day of His triumphal entry into
Jerusalem, when He came into view of the royal palace
and of the temple consecrated to God, our Lord wept
over the city, whilst He foretold the chastisements
which were about to overtake the capital of Juda.
According to this prediction, the city was to be ruth
lessly besieged, its defenders reduced to the most fright
ful extremities, the inhabitants either massacred or led
away into captivity and the temple destroyed,
a stone should be left upon a stone. Scarcely had a
till not
generation passed away, that is in less than fifty years
after the prediction of our Lord, the Romans were appoint
ed as the instruments of the divine vengance. Their
legions surrounded the city with a trench which com
pletely cut off all means of escape. The soldiers of
Titus, having afterwards invested the city still more
closely, seized the outer porches of the temple. The
inhabitants a prey to all the horrors of famine, were
either slaughtered or carried off as slaves. In a final
assault, the conquerors penetrated into the temple.
One of the Roman soldiers flung a burning brand on the
galleries of the interior which took fire ; the flames
spread to the sanctuary, which with the altar was wholly
destroyed, the priests also perishing in the conflagration ;
in a word, as our Lord had predicted, not one stone
was left upon a stone.
In the Epistle, we are reminded of the divine punish-