The Book of the Holy Rosary: Part II, Chapter I. Introduction to the Sorrowful Mysteries: The Rebuilding of Jerusalem in Straitness of Times
* Cur Deus homo.—Lib. ii. ch. xviii.
But God does not only come into the world to die. He also lives and dwells in the world to suffer. For He is Just, and those to whom He is sent are unjust. He is therefore contrary to their ways, and they are contrary to His ways. His brethren, says St John, did not believe in Him; and Jesus said to them, “Your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you, but Me it hateth, because I give testimony of it that the works thereof are evil” (St John vii. 7). “God had spoken in times past,” says St Paul, “by the prophets to the fathers;” and Jesus Himself says, “Which of the prophets have not your fathers stoned.” The hatred of the fallen world against the voice of the Just One preaching in it the words and the doctrines of His eternal kingdom, is so clearly foretold, and so circumstantially described beforehand in the language of prophecy, that there can be no further wonder when we read them, how Christ comes to say to His disciples, “O fools and slow of heart to believe all that is written in the prophets. Ought not Christ to suffer?”
The citizens of the earthly city are thus represented in the Book of Wisdom as clubbing together to maltreat the Just One, and they say one to another, “Let us therefore lie in wait for the Just, because He is not for our turn, and He is contrary to our doings, and upbraideth us with transgressions of the law, and divulgeth against us the sins of our way of life. He boasteth that He hath the knowledge of God, and calleth Himself the Son of God. He is become a censurer of our thoughts. He is grievous unto us, even to behold: for His life is not like other men’s, and His ways are very different. We are esteemed by Him as triflers, and He abstaineth from our ways as from filthiness, and He preferreth the latter end of the just, and glorieth that He hath God for His Father. Let us see, then, if His words be true, and let us prove what shall happen to Him, and we shall know what His end shall be. For if He be the true Son of God, He will defend Him, and will deliver Him from the hands of His enemies. Let us examine Him by outrages and tortures, that we may know His meekness and try His patience. Let us condemn Him to a most shameful death: for there shall be respect had unto Him by His words. These things they thought, and were deceived: for their own malice blinded them” (Wisdom ii. 12–21).
The prophet of God is never acceptable to the citizens of the earthly city: “Take, my brethren,” says St James, “for an example of suffering evil, of labour and patience, the prophets who have spoken in the name of the Lord” (James v. 10). “There is one more prophet, Micheas, the son of Jemla,” says Achab, the King of Israel, to Josaphat, “but I hate him; for he doth not prophesy of me good, but evil.” And when Micheas had prophesied at the special request of Josaphat, the King of Israel said, “Put this man in prison, and feed him with the bread of affliction and the water of distress till I come again in peace” (3 Kings xxii. 27). The book of Ecclesiasticus bears witness to what befell the prophet Jeremias, in the execution of his ministry, “They maltreated him that was consecrated a prophet from his mother’s womb, to overthrow, to pluck up, and to destroy, and to build again, and to renew” (Ecclus. xlix. 9). How still less acceptable to the world, then, could that Prophet be, who, in His denunciations, spake as never man spake. How could such a Prophet upbraid men with His Divine voice for their transgressions of the law, and they not turn against Him? How could He say to the Scribes and Pharisees, “Wo to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you make clean the outside of the cup and platter, but within you are full of all rapine and uncleanness” (Matt. xxiii. 25); and they, who had no mind to change, not fiercely and malignantly hate Him? How could He say to them, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how will ye flee from the judgment of hell?” and they not conspire together to put Him to death? Thus Christ must suffer. The Just One who rebuilds the City of God in the fallen world must encounter contradiction in His own person, and must leave suffering as a heritage to all who succeed Him in the carrying on His work, for “if they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more those of His household” (Matt. x. 25).
If all mankind could be brought to be unanimous in preferring the City of God to the earthly city, or the Babel of the world, in which they hold the insecure tenure of their already forfeit life, the rebuilding of the city of God might still be a work of peace, as the angels announced on making known the birth of the great Prophet, when they sang, “Peace on earth to men of good will,” but notwithstanding “all the glorious things that are said of the City of God,” the citizens of the earthly city, says St Augustine, “each notwithstanding prefer their own idols to the Founder and Builder of the city which is eternal” (City of God, book xi. c. 1). Hence there can never be any lasting peace between its citizens and those of the City of God; precisely as St Paul says, “As then he that was born according to the flesh persecuted him that was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now” (Gal. iv. 29). St Augustine further on explains this at some length when he says, “But because the citizens of the earthly city are each running after their own ends, one his vineyard, one his merchandise, one his wars and victory, another his match-making,—one after one thing and another after another,—-while the citizens of the City of God look up to God alone as the sole object of the worship which is called latria, it comes to pass that the City of God cannot have its laws in common with the earthly city, and therefore it is obliged to be at variance with it; and as those who think differently are necessarily disagreeable to each other, the City of God has to sustain the anger and hatred, the attacks and persecution of the earthly city, except where it terrifies its adversary by its numbers, and repels their assault by the help of God” (Book xix. c. 17).
The City of God, whilst it is in its pilgrimage in this world, St Augustine continues, nevertheless seeks its citizens from the midst of the earthly city that is thus opposed to it out of every nation and people, and it gathers together its own pilgrims from every language. Jesus Christ is its rebuilder, and He reconstructs it out of stones that have fallen down to the ground, and to which He alone can restore life. And, as we have seen, this rebuilding of the City of God brings suffering and sacrifice upon Jesus Christ.
Of this rebuilding the streets and walls of the heavenly Jerusalem, in straitness of times, in sorrow and suffering, the old law affords us a striking figure. After Solomon had built the house of the Lord, and had firmly established the holy city, with its walls and towers for the first time, the Queen of Saba came bringing rich presents to hear his wisdom, and all the kings of the earth desired to see the face of Solomon, that they might hear the wisdom that God had given him in his heart, and every year they brought him presents (2 Par. ix. 24). So it was also when God first established His City when the foundations of the world were laid. Then, “the morning stars praised Him together, and all the sons of God made a joyful melody” (Job xxxviii. 7). But after “the holy house of sanctification that Solomon had built in Jerusalem, where their fathers had praised him, had been burned by the Chaldeans with fire;” and after Jerusalem, “the city that was full of people, had sat solitary as a widow among nations for the sins of her people,” during the appointed time; when it pleased God to show His mercy, and to cause the walls to be rebuilt, then the kings of all countries no longer brought presents as they did to Solomon; but, on the contrary, they hired counsellors in the court of the King of Persia, to speak against the rebuilding, so that the Scripture describing the rebuilding says, “Of them that built the wall, and that carried burdens, and that laded, with one of his hands he did the work, and with the other he held a sword” (2 Esdras iv. 17).
“And it came to pass,” as Nehemias, who was charged with the rebuilding of the wall, relates, “that when Sanaballat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry: and being moved exceedingly he scoffed at the Jews. And said before his brethren, and the multitude of the Samaritans, What are the silly Jews doing? Will the Gentiles let them alone? will they sacrifice and make an end in a day? are they able to raise stones out of the heaps of the rubbish, which are burnt? Tobias also the Ammonite who was by him said, Let them build; if a fox go up, he will leap over their stone wall. Hear Thou our God, for we are despised; turn their reproach upon their own head, and give them to be despised in a land of captivity. Cover not their iniquity, and let not their sin be blotted out from before Thy face, because they have mocked Thy builders” (2 Esdras iv. 1–5).
How truly, as St Paul writes, did these things happen to them in a figure, and how strikingly is the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem amid dangers and insults the figure of the sufferings, mockery, and derision that Jesus Christ endured in rebuilding, by His passion and death, out of the fallen children of Adam, His eternal kingdom, the City of God, “the Jerusalem that is above, the mother of us all” (Gal. iv.)