< < Section 62 ... begins after this brief (15 line) site summary. Many souls consult this site without any Index page review. > >
It is 100% certain you're headed for Hell ...
for rejecting the Catholic Dogma ...
Warning: There are no bishops or priests in these times
< < On this site ... you will discover how you are being sent into Hell forever ... your willingness to be deceived is making you eternally culpable > >
1. The Original Sin of Adam closed Heaven for all men (sanctifying grace was lost) ... Hell became the only possible destination for the immortal souls of men. 2. God re-opened Heaven by founding the Catholic Church and re-introducing sanctifying grace to men's souls ... the same grace which Adam and Eve had lost.
We are currently in the Great Apostasy (world-wide rejection of God's Catholic Dogma), these warnings apply: 3.Warning 1: A non-Catholic anti-Christ cult (the vatican-2 heretic cult) took over all Catholic properties on 8 Dec 1965 ("v-2 council" close date).
[Section 12, 13] 4.Warning 2:No one Ordained those that you think are Priests ... all Bishops of the "v-2 council" were automatically excommunicated on 8 Dec 1965.
[Section 13.2] 5.Warning 3: Your fake "priests" turned you into heretics ... the stage shows are not Mass ... participation in the vatican-2 heresy excommunicates. [Section 13.2.2] 6.Warning 4: Top level view ... why there is not a single Catholic Bishop or Priest in the world. God's Catholic Church is devastatingly small in numbers. [Section 13.6] All vatican-2-ists: You are excommunicated from the Catholic Church. You must Abjure your heresy.
* * Click * * > Section 40
7. One can still be Catholic and get to Heaven with a proper baptism in water
[Section 7] ... believing the Dogmas ... and keeping free from mortal sin. [Section 10.1] 8. All grace, both actual and sanctifying grace, starts with God and comes into the world ... by way of the Blessed Virgin ... as Jesus Christ Himself did. [Section 4, 4.4] 9a. The Old Testament Israelite religion was the Catholic Faith unfulfilled ... the "judaism" fable started about 200 B.C. Jesus Christ was not a jew. [Section 39.1, 39.4] 9b. The "koran" is wrong ... Mohammed was not a prophet ... "allah" does not exist. The so called "allah god" makes countless errors in the "koran". [Section 113] 10.All baptized heretics are excommunicated from Christianity and headed for Hell ... with the world's pagans (those not properly baptized in water).
[Section 7.2, 8]
Translate (traduire, übersetzen, tradurre, trasladar, 번역) this Section ... now (maintenant, jetzt, ora, ahora, 지금) ... to your language ...
(1) You must have Adobe Flash Player installed. (2) Chinese, Korean, or Japanese characters not displaying ... see Appendix E.
* Help save souls by getting the Dogma out (the only soul saving truth) ... see Section 175 and it's Sub-sections * Romans 2:13 > "For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified." James 2:20 > "Know ... that faith without works is dead."
(Section 28 lists ... over 50 scriptures on works) Please e-mail here ... if you see a website that you believe is Catholic ... besides this site.
You may copy this entire site ... to your computer ... see Item # 1 on Appendix A-1.
The Destruction of Jerusalem ... by Dom Prosper Guéranger
~ ~ ~
Introduction:
1. The below write-up ... describes God's justice toward the Israelites (they were not "jews") who refused to be baptized into the Catholic Church (by 70 A.D.) ... after being given a 40 year grace period to come into the Kingdom of God, the Catholic Church. See Sections 2.3, 7.2.1, and 31 of this site.
2. Those who died within this 40 year period ... without water baptism and not believing the Catholic Faith descended into Hell.
3. Before Dom Guéranger's writing ... a few Old Testament scriptures foretelling the fall of Jerusalem ...
Catholic Faith (pre-fulfillment) writing of Jeremias 5:12 >
"They have denied the Lord, and said, It is not He: and the evil shall not come upon us: we shall not see the sword and famine."
The sword and the famine did come ... foretold in Deuteronomy Chapter 28 ... the fall of Jerusalem ...
Catholic Faith (pre-fulfillment) writing of Deuteronomy 28:53 > "And thou shalt eat the fruit of thy womb, and the flesh of thy sons and of
thy daughters, which the Lord thy God shall give thee, in the distress and extremity wherewith thy enemy
shall oppress thee."
Catholic Faith (pre-fulfillment) writing of Deuteronomy 28:55 > "The flesh of his children, which he shall eat: because he hath nothing else in the siege and the want, wherewith thy enemies shall distress thee within all thy gates."
Catholic Faith (pre-fulfillment) writing of Deuteronomy 28:57 > "And the filth of the afterbirths, that come forth from between her thighs, and the children that are born the same hour. For they shall eat them secretly for the want of all things, in the siege and
distress, wherewith thy enemy shall oppress thee within thy gates."
Note: God foretells in Deuteronomy the siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. which annihilated 1,100,000 apostates that didn't come into the Catholic Church.
Also foretold ... in Isaias Chapter 29 ...
Catholic Faith (pre-fulfillment) writing of Isaias 29:1 > "Woe to Ariel, to Ariel the city which David took: year is added to year,
the solemnities are at an end."
Catholic writing of Isaias 29:2 > "And I will make a trench about Ariel, and it shall be in sorrow and mourning, and it shall be to me
as Ariel."
Catholic Faith (pre-fulfillment) writing of Isaias 29:3 > "And I will make a circle round about thee, and I will cast up a rampart against thee, and raise up bulwarks to besiege thee."
~ ~ ~
Note 1: These events took place in 70 A.D. so Dom Prosper Guéranger is not in error by refering to these un-baptized pagans as "jews" and "jewish". The Catholic Church needs identifiers for the various groups of un-baptized pagans to try to help them, as they are all headed for Hell with the heretics. The words "jew", "jews", "jewish", and "judaism" should not be understood as having anything to do with the religion of the Old Testament Israelites because the religion of the Israelites was the Catholic Faith unfulfilled.
Note 2: After the First Pentecost, anyone who is not baptized in water is, by definition, a pagan with Original Sin on their soul. The Judeans (they weren't jews) of the first century (called Catholics starting about 107 A.D.) were baptized and had Original Sin remitted from their souls.
Note 3: The apostasy called judaism started in about 200 B.C. when many Israelites left the Israelite covenant and fell into "talmudic judaism" which was derived from the Babylonian paganism carried out of the captivity among the Israelites in 538 B.C.
~ ~ ~
Start ... Dom Prosper Guéranger writing ...
The lamentation over Jerusalem’s
woes, the subject of to-day’s Gospel, has given its name to this ninth
Sunday after Pentecost, at least among the Latins. We have already
observed that it is easy to find, even in the liturgy as it now stands,
traces of how the early Church was all attention to the approaching
fulfillment of the prophecies against Jerusalem - that ungrateful city
upon which our Jesus heaped His earliest favours. The last limit put by
mercy upon justice has, at length, been passed. Our Lord, speaking of
the ruin of Sion and its temple, had foretold that the generation that
was listening to His words should not pass until what He had announced
should be fulfilled. (St. Luke xxi. 32.) The almost forty years accorded
to Juda, that he might avert the Divine wrath, have had no other effect
than to harden the people of deicides in their determination not to
accept Christ as the Messiah. As a torrent, which, having been long pent
back, rushes along all the fiercer when the embankment breaks, vengeance
at length burst on the ancient Israel; it was in the year 70 that was
executed the sentence he himself had passed when, delivering up his King
and God to the Gentiles, (St. Matt. xx. 19.) he had cried out: "His
blood be upon us and upon our children!" (Ibid. xxvii. 25.)
Even as early as the year 67, Rome, irritated by the
senseless insolence of the jews, had deputed Flavius Vespasian, to
avenge the insult. The fact of this new general being scarcely known
was, in reality, the strongest reason for Nero’s approving of his
nomination; but to the hitherto obscure family of this soldier
God reserved the empire, as a reward for the service done to Divine
justice by this Flavius and his son Titus. Later on, Titus will see and
acknowledge (Jos., De Bello Jud., vi. 9.) that it is not Rome but
God Himself who conducts the war and commands the legions. Moses, ages
before, had seen the nation, whose tongue Israel could not understand,
rushing like an eagle upon the chosen people, and punishing them for
their sins. (Deut. xxviii. 49.) But no sooner has the Roman eagle
reached the land where he is to work the vengeance, than he finds
himself visibly checked by a superior power; and his spirit of rapine is
held back, or urged on, precisely as the prophets of the Lord of hosts
had foretold. The piecing of that eagle, as eager to obey as it was to
fight, almost seemed to be scrutinizing the Scriptures. It was actually
here that he found the order of the day for the terrible years of the
campaign. (St. Luke xxi. 22.)
As an illustration of this, we may mention what
happened in the year 66. The army of Syria, under the leadership of
Cestius Gallus, had encamped under the walls of Jerusalem. Our Lord
intended this to be nothing more, in His plan, than a warning to His
faithful ones, which He had promised them when foretelling the events
that were to happen. He had said: ‘When ye shall hear of wars, and
seditions, and rumours of war, be not terrified; these things must first
come to pass; but the end is not yet presently. (St. Matt. xxiv. 6; St.
Luke xxi. 9.) But when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed about with an
army, then know that the desolation thereof is at hand.’ (Ibid.
20) The jews had been for years angering Rome by their revolts, but she
bore with it all, if not patiently, contemptuously; but when, in one of
these seditions, Roman blood had been spilt, then she was provoked and
sent her legions. Her army, however, had first of all to furnish Jesus’
disciples with a sign; (St. Mark xiii. 4.) He had promised them that
this sign should consist in her ‘compassing Jerusalem,’ then
withdrawing for a time; this would give the Christians an opportunity of
quitting the accursed city. The Roman proconsul had his troops stationed
so near to Jerusalem that it seemed as though he had but to give the
word of command and the war would be over; instead of that, he gave the
strange order to retreat, and throw up the victory which he might have
if he wished. (Jos,. De Bello Jud., ii. 19) Cestius Gallus seemed
to men to have lost his senses; but no, he was following, without being
aware of it, the commands of heaven. Jesus had promised an escape to His
loved ones; He fulfilled His promise by this unwitting instrument.
Vespasian himself had scarcely started for Judea when
he met with one of these divine adjournments which all the Roman tactics
were several times powerless to resist; the hour marked for them to act
had not come, so they must wait, however reluctantly. The preordained
counsel of the Most High decreed that before all these things (St. Luke
xxi. 12.) which men were to bring about, before the already broken
sceptre of the ancient alliance (Zach. xi. 10.) should have disappeared
in the flames enkindled by the jews themselves (Isa. I. 11.) — the
establishment of the new Testament was to be solidly set up among the
Gentiles, and be solemnly confirmed by the blood of the apostles, its
witnesses. (St. Matt. xxiv. 9; St. Mark xiii. 10.) It was on June 29 in
the year 67 that Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom in the city of Rome.
Rome was thus made the mother-Church; and the reign of the Messiah, whom
Israel rejected, was promulgated to the whole world, with an evidence
which only the voluntarily blind could resist. Though Vespasian had
opened the campaign against Judea in the spring of that year 67, yet he
had to wait for the glorious confession of these two princes of the
apostles; that triumph secured, the impatient legions might rush to
victory as soon as they pleased. For forty-seven long days they had been
kept, by some power, staring at the citadel of Jotapata, which it was so
easy for them to take, and which would make them masters of Galilee; but
June 29 had now had its apostolic triumph in Rome, and Vespasian was at
liberty to do what he had so long wished to do; on that very June 29 he
did it - he took Jotapata.
Forty thousand dead, strewn upon the steeps of the
hill, and heaped up as high as the walls, showed the Romans what
desperate resistance they were to expect from the jewish fanaticism. Of
all the male defenders or inhabitants of Jotapata, only two survived;
one of these was Josephus, a chief leader in the jewish forces, and
historian of these cruel wars. The women and children were spared.
(Jos., De Bello Jud,. iii. 7.) But, some short time later on,
another fortress, Gamala, was attacked; it overhung a chasm. When
one-half of the besieged had been slain, and it was evident that further
resistance was impossible, the survivors, assembling the women and
children, threw them and themselves down the rock; and five thousand was
their number. When the legions stood looking around, at the close of the
day’s work, they could see but a desert and death. (Ibid. iv.
1.)
In every part of the unhappy Galilee blood was
flowing in torrents, and the flames of burning villages lighted up the
horizon. It was hard to recognize this as the land where Jesus had spent
the years of His childhood, or as the scene of His first miracles, and
of those teachings of His which were ever borrowing some exquisite
parable or other from the sight of the pretty hills and fertile vales of
that then favoured country. The arm of God was now pressing with all its
weight on this land of Zabulon and Nephthali, on which first so brightly
shone the light of salvation, (Isa. Ix. 1, 2.) as we sang on Christmas
night. So again this time it was the first to be visited by God. But
these were unhappy times; and the visit was no longer that of the divine
Orient, opening out to the world the paths of peace. (St. Luke i. 78,
79.) He was hid behind the tempest, (Ps. xvii. 12.) and darted the fiery
arrows of destruction on the ungrateful country that had refused to
welcome Him in the weakness of human flesh, which nothing but His mercy
had led Him to assume. "They cried out, on the day of my vengeance,"
says this rejected King of Israel, "but there was none to save them;
they cried to me their Lord, but I heard them not: and I will break them
as small as dust, and scatter them before the wind; I will bring them to
nought, like the dirt in the streets." (Ps. xvii. 42, 43.)
Terrible lesson which the Church learned and has
never forgotten, that no blessing, no past holiness, is of itself a
guarantee that the place thus favoured will not afterwards draw down on
itself desecration and destruction! She saw, and trembled as she saw,
these events of the first age of her history. She beheld violence and
every sort of crime profaning the paths that had been trodden by the
feet of her adorable Master, and the hills where He had passed whole
nights in prayer and praise to His eternal Father. She one day witnessed
even the pure waters of the Lake of Genesareth fearfully polluted; those
waters that had so oft reflected the features of her divine Spouse, as
when He walked on their glassy surface, or sat in Peter’s bark
superintending those mystery-meaning fishings of His apostles. The event
we here allude to was that of six thousand jewish insurgents — hemmed
in between God’s wrath and their Roman pursuers — reddening with
their blood this Sea of Tiberius, where once Jesus had spoken to the
storm and quelled it. (Jos., De Bello Jud., iii. 9.) Their livid
carcasses were thrown back by the waves on the shore, where our Lord had
uttered woe to the cities that had witnessed His miracles, and yet were
not converted. (St. Matt. xi. 20, 21.)
And souls, too, on whom God heaps His choicest
favours, inviting them thereby to a closer union with Himself, have a
lesson to learn from all this. Woe to them if, through indifference or
sloth, they neglect to correspond with their graces! Woe to them if they
imitate the cities on the Lake of Galilee, by greedily accepting the
honour done them but never producing the fruits of holiness which should
follow such signal and frequent gifts of heaven. The prophet Amos
couples these forgetful, careless souls with the cities which our Lord
had treated with such partiality, and which yet remained apathetic and
worldly; and he tells us what this slighted benefactor will say to both:
‘You only have I known of all the families of the earth! Therefore
will I visit upon you all your iniquities! Shall two walk together,
except they be agreed?’ (Amos iii. 2, 3.)
As to Israel, the highly-favoured above all people,
he would not agree with the Jesus who so loved him, and was visited with
chastisements exactly corresponding to his crimes. In the spring of the
year 68, an officer under Vespasian scoured the left banks of the
Jordan, driving the terrified Israelites before him. (Jos., De Bello
Jud., iv. 7.) They fled in thousands toward Jericho, where they
hoped to find refuge; but the river had so flooded the country round the
city, that entrance was impossible; the wretched fugitives were
overtaken and slain by the Roman troops. The Ark of the Covenant had
once opened there a miraculous passage to the tribes of Israel; but even
had it been there now, how was it to protect such unworthy descendants
of the patriarchs — descendants, that is, who broke the Covenant made
by God with the sons of Jacob? A frightful massacre, a merciless mowing
down of human beings, followed; and, at what a place! The very place
where, forty years before, St. John the Baptist had seen the axe laid to
the root of the tree, and foretold the wrath to come upon this brood of
vipers, who called themselves children of Abraham, and would not do
penance. (St. Matt. iii. 5-12.) A countless multitude drowned themselves
in the Jordan; they found death in the very stream to which our Saviour
had imparted sanctification by being Himself baptized in it, and
imparting to it the power to give light to the world. But Israel had
chosen the kingdom of the prince of this world in preference to that of
the divine Giver of life. (St. John xix. 15.) The number of those who
perished in that holy stream was so great that the heap of their dead
bodies made it impossible for vessels to sail in the river; and this
fearful obstacle continued until such times as the current had swept the
corpses down to the Dead Sea, and scattered far into that dismal lake of
malediction that hideous jetsam of the Synagogue. Had not our Lord said,
that Sodom’s guilt was less than theirs? (St. Luke x. 12.)
Rome and her legions were masters, in the north, of
Galilee and Samaria; in the east and west, of the banks of Jordan and of
the Mediterranean coast; and the conquest of Idumaea completed the
circle of iron and fire that was to shut Jerusalem in. Roman garrisons
held Emmaus, Jericho, and all the fortified positions round the jewish
capital. Having, as God’s instruments, chastened so many other
ungrateful cities. Vespasian was preparing to lay siege to the most
guilty of all, when Nero’s fall, and the events which followed it,
drew the attention, both of himself and of the whole world, from Judea.
The last years of the tyrant had witnessed frequent
"earthquakes in divers places," (Senec., Natur. Quaest., vi.
1.; Tac. An., xiv. 27, xv. 22.) and "plagues" (Senec., Ibid.,
27; Tac., Ibid., xvi. 13; Suet. In Ner., 39.) and "signs
in the heavens"; (Tac., Hist., v. 13; Jos., De Bello Jud., vi.
5.) but when he died there came "risings of nation against nation, and
kingdom against kingdom." (St. Luke xxi. 10, 11) The entire west was
in arms; and the east herself was attracted towards Rome by the immense
political commotion of the year 69. From the heights of Atlas to the
Euxine Sea, and from the Humber to the Nile, provinces and peoples were
striving for the mastery. Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, proclaimed
emperors by their respective armies, sent their rival legions from
Britain and the Rhine, from Illyria and the Danube; they met at Bedriac
for mutual slaughter. In one thing alone they that survived were
unanimous: friends of foes, all must Italy waste. Rome was taken by the
Romans; whilst on the undefended frontiers appeared Suevians, Sarmatians,
and Dacians. The Capitol and Jupiter’s temple in flames excited the
Gauls to declare their independence, and Velleda to stir up Germany to
revolt. The old world was gradually disappearing beneath the universal
anarchy and war.
Circumstances, then, suddenly seemed favourable to
Jerusalem; they gave her a fresh invitation to atone for her crimes;
but, as we shall see when commenting on this Sunday’s Gospel, she made
no other use of them than to multiply her sins, and treat herself with
greater cruelty than the Romans would have done.
In the Mass of this Sunday, which is their ninth of
St. Matthew, the Greeks read the episodes of Jesus; walking on the
waters.
"I have great sadness," cried out the Apostle of
the Gentiles, as he thought of the malediction which was about to fall
on the jews: "continual sorrow have I in my heart; for I wished myself
to be an anathema from Christ for my brethren, who are my kinsmen
according to the flesh; who are Israelites, to whom belongeth the
adoption of children, and the glory, and the covenant, and the giving of
the Law, and the service (the worship of God, prescribed by Himself),
and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ according
to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed for ever!" (Rom. ix.
2-5.) But now, they are gone astray by their own fault; they see
nothing; they understand nothing. (Isa. vi. 9; St. Matt. xiii. 14, 15.)
The royal banquet of the Scriptures, on which their fathers feasted, (Ibid,
iv. 4.) is now turned by them into an occasion of error; they have made
those Scriptures a snare for their own destruction; darkness covers
their understanding, and chastisement for all future ages is their own
making. (Ps. lxvii. 23, 24)
Gentiles! You that have been substituted for those
broken branches, and are grafted on the stem of the Covenant, (Rom. xi.
17.) learn a lesson from their fall. God, who has shown you so much and
so great gratuity of mercy, and that at the very time He was inflicting
upon them the chastisements they so richly merited, will not allow His
loving designs upon you to be frustrated against your own will. If you
are faithful to the call of His grace, He will be faithful to you, and
preserve you from temptations which you could not resist; or, He will so
watch the combat that His divine help will make your soul rise superior
to the trial; and this in every temptation you will find, not defeat,
but the merit of a victory, all the more glorious, as it seemed so much
above the power of human strength. And yet, never forget that the same
causes which brought about the destruction of the jews would also lead
you to ruin. They fell, because of their unbelief; you, who once had no
faith and yet God showed mercy to you, are now what you are by faith. Be
not, therefore, high-minded with self-complacency; but remember how God,
who broke off the natural branches from the glorious tree, will not
spare you, if you cease to be faithful; and whilst you do well to admire
His mercy, you do not wisely if you forget His inexorable justice. (Rom.
xi. 20-30.)
Well, therefore, does our mother the Church instruct
us in to-day’s Epistle, as to the lamentable antecedents of the jewish
deicides; she tells us of that list of sins and chastisements, which
gradually led on to the final crime and total ruin of the apostate
nation. We, who live in what the Church calls the "evening of the
world," (Hymn for Adv. Vesp.) have this great advantage, that we can
profit by the what the past ages have experienced. The Holy Spirit had
no other end in view, when He would have the history of the ancient
people written: He would have the future ages there learn lessons of
salvation. By the various episodes of that history, which form so many
groups of prophetic events, He would show us the economy of God’s
providence in His government of the world and of His Church. Founded as
she has been by her divine Spouse in immutable truth, and maintained by
the Holy Spirit in unfailing and ever-increasing holiness, the Church has
nothing to fear of that which happened to the Synagogue - we mean, of
that total wreck which the liturgy brings forward for our consideration
today. No, the ruin of the jews is a prophetic image of the destruction
of the world, (St. Matt. xxiv. 3.) which will have rejected the Church;
not of the Church herself, who will then ascend to her Lord, perfected
in love and holiness by the trials endured in those latter days. (Apoc.
xxii. 17.) But the assurance of salvation, granted to the bride of the
Son of God, does not extend to her children, taken either individually
or collectively - that is, men or nations. On each one of us it is
incumbent that we meditate on the sad fate which befell Jerusalem; as
also on what happened, ages before, to the ancestors of the jewish
people, viz., that scarce one of those who were living when Moses led
them out of Egypt lived to enter into the promised land.
And yet, as the apostle argues, they were all
journeying in the path of life, protected by the mysterious cloud ,
beneath which divine Wisdom shaded them by day, and served them as a
pillar of fire by night. (Wisd. x. 17.) Led on by Moses - who was a
type of the future divine Head of the Christian people - they had all
passed through the sea. All of them thus baptized in that symbolic cloud
and in those saving waters which had engulfed their foes, just as the
water of the Christian font destroys the sins of them that are washed in
it - all of them were fed by the same spiritual food, and all drank at
the same holy source which issued from the rock, which was Christ. Yet
there were very few, out of all those thousands, with whom God was
pleased. (1 Cor. x. 1-6) But how much more grievous would the sins of
Christians be, who are blessed with the resplendent and solid realities
of the Law of grace, than were the evil desires, and idolatry, and
fornication, and mumurings of the Israelites , who had but the figures
and foreshadowings of our privileges!
Note: Passing through the parting of the Red Sea is an Old Testament prophesy
(or type) of baptism. The Egyptians who were in pursuit were demons in this O/T
baptism type. All the Egyptians who pursued into the parted sea were destroyed just as
baptism remits Original Sin and gives our souls the ability to resist the temptations
of demons. Any jew who did not go through the waters of the sea would have been destoyed
by the Egyptians, as all the unbaptized are destroyed, having no defense against the
temptations of demons.
Sequel of the holy Gospel according to Luke
Chapter XIX [19:41-47]
And when he drew near, seeing the city, he wept
over it, saying: If thou also hadst known, and that in this thy day, the
things that are to thy peace: but now they are hidden from thy eyes. For
the days shall come upon thee: and thy enemies shall cast a trench about
thee and compass thee round and straiten thee on every side, And beat
thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee. And they
shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone: because thou hast not
known the time of thy visitation. And entering into the temple, he began
to cast out them that sold therein and them that bought. Saying to them:
It is written: My house is the house of prayer. But you have made it a
den of thieves. And he was teaching daily in the temple.
The passage just read to us from the Holy Gospel
takes us back to the day of our Lord’s triumphant entry into
Jerusalem. This triumph, which God the Father willed should be offered
to His Son before the commencement of His Passion, was not, as we well
know, anything of a recognition of the Messiah made by the Synagogue.
Neither the meek, gentle manners of the King, who came to the daughter
of Sion seated on an ass, (Zach. ix. 9.) nor His merciful severity upon
the profaners of the temple, nor His farewell teachings in His Father’s
house, could open the eyes of men who were determined to keep them shut
against the light of salvation and peace. Not even the tears of the Son
of Man, then, could stay God’s vengeance: there is a time for justice,
and the jews were resolved it should come to themselves.
How loudly had the prophets spoken to them in God’s
name! Woe to the provoking and redeemed city! She hath not hearkened to
the voice her God. Her princes are in the midst of her as roaring lions;
her judges are evening wolves; her prophets are senseless, men without
faith; her priests have defiled the sanctuary; they have acted unjustly
against the law (they have violated it). (Soph. iii. 1-4, i. 9.) Crush
the city as in a mortar! (Ibid. 11.) Go through the city and
strike! let not your eye spare, nor be ye moved to pity! Utterly destroy
old and young, maidens, children and women — yea, destroy all that are
not marked upon their foreheads with Thau! And begin ye at my sanctuary;
slay the priests, and the ancients; defile the house (my temple), and
fill its courts with the bodies of the slain! (Ezech, ix, 4-7)
Alas! precedence in chastisement was richly due to
those princes of the people who had had precedence in crime; it was due
to those priests and ancients who had decreed the death of the Just One,
and driven the multitude to cry out: "Crucify Him!" (St. Matt. xxvii.
20.) Jealous of the miracles of the Man-God, they said in their
perfidious hypocrisy: "If we let Him alone" (doing all these
miracles), "all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and
take away our nation." (St. John xi. 47-53) God has turned their
impious diplomacy against them. But, as far as they themselves are
concerned, they will have their way; not one of them will see the
Romans; for, before the arrival of the legions, John of Gischala, and
Simon the son of Gioras, will have annihilated this deicidal
aristocracy, hated of both heaven and earth. When, after the war is
over, Titus shall enter into Rome, these two brigand chiefs, and prime
movers of the war, shall adorn his triumph; they shall be the
substitutes of the nobles of Juda before the conquerors chariot. Two
bandits, representatives of Jerusalem, in the streets of Rome, her
rival! What a divine retaliation for the two thieves, whom the Synagogue
gave as an escort to its King on the Dolorous Way, and made them His
crucified fellows in Calvary! — But, let us resume the sequel of
events, and give them as briefly as the subject permits.
After the rupture with Rome, and the retreat of
Cestius Gallus, the government of Jerusalem had been entrusted to the
high-priest Ananus, (Jos., De Bello Jud., ii. 20 et seq.) brother-in-law
to Caiphus, and the last of the five sons of Annas, who succeeded each
other in the office of high-priest. By a visible dispensation of God’s
justice, this family, the guiltiest of all in the crime of the
crucifixion, found itself at the head of the nation when the fatal hour
came: it was impossible then to mistake the meaning of God’s vengeance
upon His people. Independently of the enormous crime, whose
responsibility rested on his race, Ananus had a personal sin to atone
for — the death of St. James the Less, who had been martyred, by his
orders, in the year 62. Rationalist or Sadducee like his kin, he
deplored the war, and would have been glad to see peace restored; (Jos.,
De Bello Jud., iv. 5.) but he could not shirk the obligation his
office imposed on him of organizing the defence. Ruler most unworthy,
yet ruler he was; and therefore, as the Prophet Isaias expresses it,
this whole ruin was under his hand, (Isa. iii. 6.) under his management;
it would, necessarily, when it came, fall on him and crush him.
It was not long before the fanatics, who had
instigated the rebellion and taken the name of Zealots, became
dissatisfied with the way in which Ananus was managing affairs: so they
revolted against him, and put to death the most illustrious men of the
city. Reinforced by all the enthusiasts of the other towns, and by the
highway-robbers who were daily flocking to Jerusalem, they made
themselves masters of the temple. Out of hatred for the ancient priestly
families, they changed the order of sacrifice. They put the office of
high-priest on a peasant, who happened to be a descendant of Aaron’s
family, but was so unfitted for the dignity that he did not even know
what was meant by a priest. (Jos., De Bello Jud., iv. 3.)
About this same time the wreck of the Galilean bands,
headed by John of Gischala, occasioned the first defeats, and excited
the people to exasperation; they made common cause with the rebels, and
increased their fury against all whom they suspected of an inclination
to treat with Rome. The Zealots were hard pressed by the troops of
Ananus, and had already been forced back into the inner temple; on the
advice of John of Gischala; they called the wild Idumean herdsmen to
come to their aid. These fierce auxiliaries came on Jerusalem in the
thick of a storm that was raging during the night; they found the
watchmen asleep, and put them to death. The very earth, says Josephus,
had shaken at their approach; and, on the evening before their arrival,
had been heard to moan. (Jos., De Bello Jud., iv. 4.) Up to the
morning, amidst violent wind and rain and lightning, howling themselves
as if to add to the din of the tempest, amidst the shouts of the wounded
and the screams of women, they pitilessly murdered every one they met.
When at length daylight appeared, it revealed the horrors of the
previous night; eight thousand five hundred dead bodies were lying on
the ground, and the blood was running in streams all around the temple.
The corpse of Ananus, after being insulted, stripped, trodden on, was
given as food to the dogs. The following days, twelve thousand men, in
the vigour of health, and picked out of the most distinguished families,
were also put to death by the Idumeans, either by torture or by other
means. As soon as they left, the Zealots became masters of the city, and
were guilty of cruelties even greater than those exercised by the
Idumeans. All those whose independent character, or influence, or noble
birth, excited suspicions were at once massacred, nor were their friends
or relatives allowed to bury or mourn over them. The lower classes, the
poor, and the unknown, alone escaped with their lives.
The justice of God overtook the princes of Juda. (Isa.
iii. 14.) Their blood mingled with the dust, their unburied bodies lying
as dung upon the streets, (Soph. i. 8, 17.) would all this remind Sion
of those prophecies which had foretold these days of tribulation and
anguish, these days of bitterness for the mighty and the strong? (Ibid,
14-16; Ezech. xxiv. 3-5.) The Christians of Jerusalem, who were then
sheltering beyond the Jordan, would remember, if no one else did, the
inspired words which their bishop, St. James, had written eight years
before to the twelve tribes who were dispersed throughout the world:
(St. James i. 1.) "Go to now, ye rich men! Weep and howl for your
miseries that shall come upon you! Your riches are putrefied; you
treasure is a store of wrath. Ye have feasted; but your feasts have but
nourished you for the day of slaughter. Ye have condemned, and put to
death the Just One, and he resisteth you not.... But the coming of the
Lord draweth near." (Ibid. v. 1-8.) It was truly the Lord, who
was avenging His own cause; (Jer. v. 5, 9.) and Vespasian was well aware
of it, when he thus answered those who urged him to take advantage of
all these troubles, and attack the city: "God is a better general than
I: let us leave Him to deliver up the jews to the Romans without any
trouble on our side, and give us victory without our incurring any risk."
(Jos., De Bello Jud., iv. 6.)
Jerusalem was then but in the beginning of her woes
and of her civil strifes. The ambitious character of John of Grischala
did not allow him to be long at peace with the Zealots. He separated
himself from them; and to the Galileans, who supported his cause, he
gave permission to do whatever they pleased. To pillage and murder were
added the frightful excesses of the half-idolatrous race which, in the
days of the Assyrian kings, had been substituted for the tribes of
Israel; (4 Kings xv. 29, xvii. 6, 18, 23-41.) it had borrowed from
judaism little better than a mass of superstition, which it mingled with
the customs and vices of its predecessors. Then was the daughter of Sion
compelled to witness and endure the abominations, wherewith the prophets
of the Most High had threatened her. Humbled and indignant, the unhappy
city would fain have shaken off the yoke. (Jos. De Bello Jud.,
iv. 7, 9.)
In those days a celebrated brigand was laying Idumea
waste; towns and villages were destroyed, houses were pulled down or
burnt; and, according to the prophecy of Abdias, (Abdias 5, 6) he was
ransacking Edom through and through, right to the very core. His name
was Simon, son of Gioras. What with slaves, criminals, outlaws, and
malcontents of every party, he had got together upwards of 20,000
well-armed men, not counting other 40,000 who followed him. This was the
strange Messiah on whom Jerusalem cast her eyes for help in her trouble!
A deputation, headed by a high-priest, waited on this son of Gioras,
begging him to accept the sovereignty. He deigned to consent to their
wishes! Proud and haughty, says Josephus, (Ubi supra.) he
graciously allowed Sion to offer him her suppliant homage. He was led
into the city of David, amidst the enthusiastic acclamations of the
people, who hailed as their protector and saviour Simon the murderer,
Simon the brigand! O Jesus, Son of David and Son of God, how art Thou
avenged by all this! They wished it to be; they themselves had passed
the sentence: "Not Him, but Barabbas!"; (St. John xviii. 40.) The
choices of the children was in keeping with the preference entertained
by their fathers. Bar Gioras — worthy descendant of Barabbas — once
he was master of the city, treated alike both them that had invited him
and them that he had been invited to reduce order — that is, he
treated them all as enemies. Day and night was the massacre kept up by
his savage horde, until every man of worth or credit in Jerusalem was
made away with. (Jos., De Bello Jud., vii. 8.)
Meanwhile, the Galileans, driven back from Sion and
the lower town by the new-comers, had retreated to the temple, of which
they occupied the first enclosure. The Zealots had grown more than ever
discontented with John of Grischala, and made the inner temple their
fortified place of refuge. They were less numerous than the two other
parties, but their position was far preferable, for it was on the very
summit of the holy mount. Then, too, they had provisions in abundance,
seeing that all the first-fruits and offerings made to the temple were
under their absolute control. They passed their time in feasting and
drunken revellings. Little cared they for the stones hurled by Galilean
catapults; nor were they in the least troubled at finding that these
huge missiles struck the priests at the altar, thus mingling the blood
of the sacrificers with that of the victims, and strewing the sacred
courts with the bodies of dead or dying. Sacrilege and drunkenness —
such was the end of those descendants of the austere pharisees! (Jos., Ibid.,
v. 1.) Here again Jesus, their crucified victim, was avenged.
Whilst the abominations of desolation, foretold by
Daniel, was thus standing in the holy place, (St. Matt. xxiv. 15.) John
of Grischala saw that the Zealots were too stupefied by the feastings to
cause him any further alarm. He fell on the city, like a bird of prey,
there to find the necessary provisions; and out of hatred for Simon, he
destroyed by fire all he could not carry away. Simon, instead of
quenching the fire, extended it in every part where John was likely to
pass, hoping, by this means, to deprive the Galileans of all further
victualling. Immense stores of corn and other provisions had been
amassed by the jewish leaders, as a necessary resource in case of a
future siege; but all were now destroyed by these two men, who were
greater enemies to their country than were the Romans themselves. Thus
was spent the year 69 — a year of respite, which Rome, torn as she was
by factions of her own, was compelled to allow, and which might have
been of such incalculable benefit to the jews. (Jos., ubi supra.)
With the exception of the armed troops, there were no
other inhabitants in Jerusalem but women and old men. The passover of 70
was drawing near, and it produced a sort of truce among the several
parties. The city began to be again crowded, and with a population far
exceeding the ordinary number. The Romans had pillaged the jewish
provinces; Sion had been even more cruelly treated, and by her own
children: and yet, in this year of 70, there assembled within this city
of final vengeance as though it were the whole nation, and that from
every quarter of the globe. (Ibid. vi. 9.) It had been the same
at the time of our Jesus’ crucifixion; it seemed as though the whole
jewish people insisted on witnessing the consummation of the deicide.
The apostles afterwards besought them to confess their having been
accomplices in the crime of Calvary, but the preaching was fruitless;
the terrific lessons of recent events was unable to open their eyes. As
it was in the days of the Pasch so salutary to mankind, but so fatal to
Juda; and as it was a subsequent Pentecost, so now there were jews
congregated "out of every nation under heaven," (Acts ii. 5.) not,
indeed, to hear an apostle preaching to them to do penance, (Ibid.
38) but to undergo that which Moses had foretold, and St. Peter had
recalled to their memory — the extermination of all such as should
refuse to hearken to the Messiah of the Lord. (Ibid. iii. 22, 23)
As the Man-God had said, the terrible day came
suddenly, and as a snare, upon this immense assemblage of people. (St.
Luke xxi. 34, 35.) The empire was in the hands of Vespasian; the
prosperous fortune of Rome was re-established on the whole of the
frontiers; and Titus had just reached Caesarea, with orders to put an
end to the eastern question. He sent word to the legions then in Judea
to effect, from the respective points they occupied a joint
concentration towards the capital. When the tenth legion marched from
Jericho and was seen encamped on Mount Olivet — that is, on the very
place where Jesus wept as He looked on Jerusalem, and foretold the siege
which was to be its ruin — the unexpected arrival of the Romans
alarmed the pilgrims, and made them busy themselves with preparations
for a battle, rather than for the solemnization of the Pasch. The
several parties agreed to forget, at least for a day, their own
animosities, and unite all their forces together; they made two
desperate sallies, for the purpose of dislodging the enemy on the Mount;
but each time they were repelled. (Jos., De Bello Jud., v. 2.)
The Pasch which is about to be celebrated, is, as
ever, and now more than ever, the passover of the Lord; but the
Lord is no longer leading the sons of Jacob to their deliverance by it.
Juda has made himself the enemy of the Lamb, whose blood should be the
sign of the redeemed of the Pasch. Whilst the blood of this Divine Lamb
is enriching the whole earth, whilst the light of the vanquisher of
death is illumining the whole world, Juda is there, obstinately keeping
to his figures and shadows. More stiff-necked than the Egyptian, and
more guilty than Pharaoh, he would, if he could, hold the true Israel in
the trammels of his own slavish law, just as he once vainly tried to
make the true Son of God an everlasting prisoner in the tomb. As to
Jesus, He has, years ago, set Himself free; and now more terrible than
He was in Mesraim, He is passing over, as the avenger both of
Himself and of His Church. The Pasch — the feast of feasts, whose
memory is every Sunday brought back to us — is now about to receive
its final completion. On the Tuesday of our Easter, we were saying: "How
terrible will be the passage of the Lord over Jerusalem, when the sword
of the Roman legions shall destroy a whole people!" (See our first vol.
of "Paschal Time." P. 226.)
"Woe to thee, O Ariel! Ariel, the city which David
took — the city where God had His temple and His altar — thy years
are passed; thy solemnities are at an end! (Isa. xxix. 1.) Take away
from me the tumult of thy songs! Psalms, in thy mouth, have lost all
their meaning. I will not hear the canticles of thy harp. (Amos v. 23.)
The song of lamentation is heard in Israel, for his house is fallen. (Ibid.
1.) In every street there shall be wailing; and in all places, they
shall say: Woe! Woe!" (Ibid. 16.)
This prophetic cry of Woe — this most gloomy
foreboding that all the threats uttered in Scripture against Jerusalem
are on the point of being fulfilled — was forced upon the inhabitants’
ears. Ever since the feast of Tabernacles of the year 62, an unknown
peasant — the husbandman, as the prophet Amos called him, a man
skillful in lamentation (Ibid.) — had been ceaselessly paving
the streets of the wretched city, crying out day and night: "A voice
from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a
voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the
bridegroom and the brides, a voice against all this people!" Tried,
questioned, scourged, even till his flesh was torn to pieces and his
bones laid bare — nothing could prevent him from continuing his most
unwelcome work. On the festival days above all, this precursor of the
vengeance of the Son of Man redoubled the energy of his plaintive
enthusiasm, which gave a superhuman emphasis to his cry of Woe. To every
word of kindness or reproach, to every act of charity or cruelty, he
gave neither thanks nor plaints, but went on with the same words: "Woe!
Woe! to Jerusalem!" And thus he continued for seven years and five
months, without his voice being altered by weakness or hoarseness.
During the early days of the siege he was seen by the Romans running to
and fro along the walls, shouting: "Woe to the city! Woe to the
people! Woe to the holy house!" At length he added: "Woe! woe to me!"
Immediately a stone, thrown from one of the engines, smote him, and he
died on the spot. (Jos., De Bello Jud., vi. 5.)
Jerusalem has drunk of the cup of madness, and
nothing seems to impress her; she is drunk with the cup of God’s
wrath; yea, she has drained it to the last dregs. (Isa. xxix. 9-14, li.
17.) What a terrific day, this last celebration of the jewish Pasch! The
historian Josephus tells us what it was — sacrilegious, bloody, and
noisy with the shouts, which even the enemy could hear, of the strife of
the dissentient factions, for all had revived. Taking advantage of the
gates being opened to the pilgrims, some Galileans, disguised, made
their way into the inner temple; where, throwing aside their cloaks, and
displaying their weapons, they attacked the crowd that stood round the
altar. They beat and murdered; then, trampling on the dying and the
dead, they drove the people outside the courts. Meanwhile, the Zealots,
who were taken unawares, rushed, in dismay, into the subterranean
caverns of the temple. (Jos. De Bello Jud., v. 3.) What a Pasch!
What a feast! worthy, indeed, of God’s hatred and rejection. (Amos v.
21.) Unhappy feasters, that had come from the ends of the world to this
solemnity! How is it that they forgot to apply the words of the prophet?
"Woe to them that desire the day of the Lord! To what end is it for
you? This day of the Lord is darkness and not light. You shall be as a
man fleeing from the face of a lion, and a bear should meet him; or, as
one that entereth into the house, and, when he leaneth with his hand
upon the wall, a serpent should bite him." (Ibid. 18, 19.)
Terrible prophecy! How strangely it is verified: — the Romans are
yonder in their camps; Simon is in the city; John of Gischala is in the
temple, its sole master!
As in the days of Jeremias, so now : the sword and
famine — it is hard to say, which was the busier to make this
multitude prey; (Jer. xiv. 18.) for, owing to the previous depredations,
famine had made itself felt from the beginning of the siege. Each day
added to its intensity, and urged on the savage instincts of the armed
ruffians to attack all who were not of their party. It was not hatred
only that now filled Sion with murder; to rob, or to get something to
keep themselves from starvation, these were additional motives to make
such men grudge each other’s existence. Under plea that they were
conspirators, Simon and John had the rich summoned to their respective
tribunals; and then, adding insult to injustice, these two wretches,
who, in the intervals between fighting against the Romans, were carrying
on their own deadly feud — these two judges, having first seized the
property of their victims, sent them to the second bar, (Jos., De
Bello Jud., v. 10.) under pretense that they wished to show each
other a mutual kindly feeling; giving the one who had nothing to steal,
the option of condemning to death. Scarcely forty years before in these
very streets, through which the jewish aristocracy was being
ignominiously dragged from Simon to John, and from John to Simon, there
was another Victim of the nation, was made the Pledge of a mock
reconciliation, and, with a fool’s uniform put on Him, was sent back
from Herod to Pilate, there to await judgment! (St. Luke xxiii. 7-12.)
Whilst these tyrants were thus living on the public
distress, there were hundreds of starved creatures, whom hunger drove to
go forth by night into the fields, and there try to find some wild
herbs. If they fell into the hands of the Romans, these, unwilling to be
burdened with such prisoners, had them crucified within sight of the
walls. Five hundred and upwards were thus captured each day; and, oh!
what a fearful detail, but how loud in its significance! — all this
was done, with Calvary opposite! and, as Josephus tells us, there was
not room enough to plant the crosses, nor wood enough for making them.
(Jos., De Bello Jud., v. 11.)
Titus had flattered himself that the taking of
Jerusalem would be an affair of a few days. He, of course, disregarded
the prophecies which declared that the deicide city was to be ‘compassed
round with a trench’; and preferred to use negotiations and a series
of assaults, rather than be detained by the tedious operation of a
blockade. But he was, of course, mistaken; his messengers received, in
answer to their parlays of peace, nothing but insults and arrows; and,
as to assaults, all the bravery of his legions was powerless against the
fortresses where the factions were protected. Two months thus passed
away in useless attempts; all that the Romans had possession of was the
lower town, which the jewish contesting parties had already reduced to
ruins; but Sion and Moriah still held up their heads in defiance against
the determined invaders. There was nothing, then, to do, but make up
their minds to defer Rome and her pleasures to some later season, (TAC.,
Hist., v. 11.) and encircle Jerusalem with that terrible trench, which
the Gospel had said must be cast about her. The literal following out of
the plan traced by God got the better of Titus’ impatience. He set his
legions to the work; they must change their manual labour, and instead
of bows and arrows, they must handle pickaxe and spade. To have seen
them at work, one would have said they were thinking of Jesus’ words,
for they were fulfilling them as though they were the most devoted of
His servants; Josephus would have it, that they were animated by a
divine influence. (Jos., De Bello Jud., v. 12.) In the brief
space of three days, they completed an earth-wall measuring a little
over five miles round, a work which would ordinarily, have occupied
several months. God had thus spoken by the prophet Isaias: ‘I will
make a trench about Ariel; and it shall be in sorrow and mourning; and
it shall be to me as Ariel. I will make a circle round about thee (O
Jerusalem), and will cast up a rampart against thee, and raise up
bulwarks to besiege thee.’ (Isa. xxix. 2,3.) Truly, Jerusalem was thus
made as an Ariel to Jehovah — that is, an immense altar
of countless victims.
The famine, by this time, was intensely increased;
for every exit into the fields was now closed against the unfortunate
creatures, who, till then, had been able to eke out their miserable
existence by picking up, at the risk of their lives, a few seeds or
roots. (Lam. V. 9, 10.) A bushel of wheat was sold for a talent (about
240 pounds sterling). Those who could afford it gave their costliest
treasures for a morsel of bread; (Lam. i. 11.) but, as to those who had
nothing to give, they must drag the sewers in hope of finding food. The
vilest rubbish was devoured with avidity. Filth, too foul to have a name
was hidden as though it were a treasure, for which husband quarreled
with his wife, and mothers grudged it their children. (Deut. xxviii. 53, 55, 56,
57; Jos., De Bello Jud., v. 10-12.) The factions had, thus far,
laughed at the people’s starvation; but they soon began themselves to
feel the gnawings of famine, and then they furiously attacked those who
were reported as having something to eat. If a man were sinking, he was
said to be feigning the weakness of death, in order to prevent search
being made for his victuals; if he had just strength enough to walk a
few steps, it was taken as an indication that he had some hidden
eatables about him. All were savagely tortured to make them own the
imputed crime of having something yet to live on. Like famished dogs —
it is the expression used both by the historian and the Psalmist (Ibid.
vi. 3; Ps. lviii. 7, 15, 16.) — they ran wildly through the city,
knocking down the doors of the suspected, ferreting in every nook and
hole, and returning two or three times within the hour. A savoury smell
was one day perceived coming from a house which had been thus frequently
visited; this was more than enough for a further search. In they rushed;
a woman was there; they threatened her with death, unless she at once
declared where was her feast. "It is my son," she replied; "there
are the remnants." The woman was Mary, daughter of Eleazer; once rich,
and of a noble family, she, maddened by hunger, had murdered her infant
child, and had fed on his flesh. (Jos., De Bello Jud., vi. 3;
Deut. xxviii. 53-56.)
All these horrors failed to subdue the ferocious
obstinacy of John of Gischala and Simon, son of Gioras. In spite,
however, of their precautions, and their cruelties towards those who
were suspected of meditating an escape, there were, every day, scores
who, by throwing themselves down the walls, were able to reach the Roman
camp. Deeply moved at the sight of so much misery, Titus received them
kindly, and gave them their liberty. But, adds Josephus, "God had
condemned the whole of this people, and turned the very means of safety
into occasion of destruction." (Jos., De Bello Jud., v. 13.)
Many of these poor fugitives were so exhausted on reaching the camp that
they died on taking the food which had been too long denied them. A
still greater number fell victims to the Arabs and Syrians, who followed
the Roman army; for, a report having been circulated that some of the
jews had swallowed their gold before leaving Jerusalem, in order the
more effectually to hide it, these wild auxiliaries, strangers to the
discipline of the legions and born enemies of the jewish people,
ensnared the unfortunate fugitives and cut them into pieces, hoping to
find what would satisfy their monstrous avarice. During one single night
there were two thousand found lying thus embowelled . (Ibid.) How
all this forces us to think of the death of Judas, (Acts i. 18.) and of
the punishment of his deicidal betrayal! And had not all this people
imitated that traitorous apostle? He, the Iscariot, had delivered up the
Son of Man to the chief priests and leaders of the jews; the jews
delivered Him up to the Gentiles; and the Prophet Zacharias makes them
all share in the responsibility of that infamous barter, wherewith began
the sacred Passion of our sweet Jesus. (Zach. xi., 12, 13.)
In the city, the ravages of the famine were beyond
all imagination. Josephus, speaking of them, uses, without being aware
of it, the very expression of our Redeemer: "In no time did any other
city ever suffer such miseries." (Jos., De Bello Jud., v. 10;
St. Matt. xxiv. 21.) In the space of a few months there were counted six
hundred thousand (600,000) dead, and to these burial of one sort or other was
given; as to the rest, they could not be numbered, for the survivors had
not the strength needed for burying them, and they were left to rot in
the houses or streets.
Meanwhile, on July 12, a greater trial than all this
befell Jerusalem and the whole jewish people: for want of victims, the continual
sacrifice was taken away, as in the days of Antiochus, (Dan. viii.
11-13.) but this time it was for ever. It was the end, the openly
declared end, of Mosaism and its worship, to be henceforth replaced, and
without dispute, by the Sacrifice of the law of love; the end, with but
the brief interval of a siege and a war, which had then no other object
to achieve, and therefore, no further reason for its continuance. An
immense grief — a grief that admitted no consolation — seized the
hearts of the jewish people, who, up the very last, had lived on the
empty hope fostered by the false prophets. (Jos., De Bello Jud.,
vi. 5.)
The foolhardy obstinacy of Simon and John rejected,
even then, the proposals of Titus, that he would spare both city and
temple. Hostilities were therefore resumed, implacably and pitilessly
resumed. But the jewish soldiers had not energy enough to keep pace with
the fanaticism of their leaders; worn out by famine, they had not the
unflinching resistance needed for repelling the sustained assaults of
the Romans. Already the tower of Antonia, which commanded the temple,
was in the power of the enemy, and each day he was seen closing in
nearer to the sacred edifice. Its defenders resolved on one last effort;
roused by the greatness of their misfortune, they rushed through the
vale of Cedron, and made a desperate charge on the post of Mount Olivet.
It looked though, for these final engagements, the instinct of God’s
vengeance, which weighed upon them, was leading them to this place of
prophecy, where the Son of Man had wept over Jerusalem, and where, as we
already said, the first battle was fought. Repelled, and in despair,
they returned to the city, which they were never again to leave; then,
with their own hands, setting fire to the outer porticoes of the temple,
they gave the first enclousure over to the Romans.
Titus was desirous, above all things, to save the
temple; but, as Josephus observes, "God had, for certain, long ago
doomed it to the fire; ... and the flames were kindled by the jews
themselves, when that fatal day came." (Jos., De Bello Jud.,
vi. 4.) It was August 4, in the year 70, a Sabbath-day, and the
anniversary of the first destruction of the holy place under
Nabuchodonosor. The guards of the temple, exasperated by suffering,
stupefied by hunger, attacked the soldiers who, by Titus’ orders, were
quenching the fire that had been some days burning at the outer portion
of the building. They were soon beaten back into the temple, and, this
time, they were not the only ones to enter. While they were falling by
hundreds beneath the sword of the Romans, now unexpectedly made masters
of the inner enclosure, one of the soldiers, forgetting the orders given
by Titus, but, as Josephus puts it, "urged on by a divine power,"
(Jos., De Bello Jud., vi. 4.) seized a firebrand, and hurled it,
through a window, into one of the rooms adjoining the sanctuary. The
flame burst forth and spread; the efforts of Titus to stay it were
useless. Simon’s soldiers on Mount Sion saw it rising up towards the
sky. At this fearful spectacle, the famished and wounded, turning
towards the falling temple, forgot all their sufferings. From these
thousands of dying jews, all of them possessed with the one same grief,
there arose a loud scream of despair, which, blending with shouts of the
pagan soldiers, was heard even on the mountains of Perea, beyond the
Jordan and the Dead Sea. Mount Moriah, on fire, seemed as though its
very foundations were burning, and blood was flowing enough to quench
the flames. The number of the slain was so great that the ground could
not be seen, and the soldiers, as they marched, had to trample on the
dead. The priests who had mounted on the roof of their temple, the women
and children crouching by thousands in its galleries, all perished in
the flames with the treasures of the sanctuary. (Ibid. 5.)
John of Gischala, gathering together his few
remaining followers, had escaped between the enemy’s battalions, and
had joined Simon in the high portion of the city. The contest continued
for a few weeks longer, but it was the effort of a last agony. On
September 1, Sion was taken, plundered and burnt like Moriah and the
lower town. The prediction of to-day’s Gospel was fulfilled.
Jerusalem, beaten flat to the ground, and her children that were with
her, was but a mass of smoking ruins. Eleven hundred thousand (1,100,000) men
had perished during the siege. Of the ninety-seven thousand that had
been taken prisoners during the whole war, seven hundred were picked out
as fit to grace the conqueror’s triumph; of the remainder, those who
were over seventeen years of age were sent to the mines, or reserved for
the amphitheater; the others supplied the slave-markets of the empire
for some length of time. (Jos., De Bello Jud., vi. 9,)
Immaculate Heart of Mary ~ Our Lady of Good Remedy ~ Our Lady of La Salette ~
Immaculate Heart of Mary
~ Pray the Rosary for essential graces ... see Section 4.1 of this website for instructions ~
~ Wear the Brown Scapular as the Blessed Virgin instructed us ... as Our Lady of Mount Carmel ~
Mother of Christ
Hear Thou thy people's cry
Selected prophesies of the Blessed Virgin - & - Quotes on being devoted to the Blessed Virgin. More > Section 4 and Section 4.4
Ezechiel 44:2 > "This gate shall be shut … no man shall pass through it … the Lord the God of Israel hath entered in by it."
Proverbs 8:35 > "He that shall find me (the Blessed Virgin), shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord."
St. Bonaventure, died 1274 > "No one ever finds Christ but with and through Maria. Whoever seeks Christ apart from Maria seeks Him in vain."
Genesis 3:15 > "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel."
Ecclesiasticus 24:25 > "In me is all grace of the way and the truth, in me is all hope of life and virtue."
St. Antoninus, died 1459 > "All graces that have ever been bestowed on men, all of them came through Maria."
St. John Damascene, died 749 > "Pure and Immaculate Virgin, save me and deliver me from eternal damnation."
Wisdom 7:26 > "For she is the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty."
Ecclesiasticus 24:24 > "I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope."
St. Agnes, died 304 > "There is no one in the world who, if he asks for it, does not partake of the Divine mercy through the tenderness of Maria." (Truth and mercy cannot be separated)
Proverbs 30:11-12 > "There is a generation that ... doth not bless their mother. A generation pure in their own eyes and yet not washed from their filthiness."
Blessed John Eudes, died 1680 > "Every grace and blessing possessed by the Church, all the treasures of light, holiness, and glory ... are due to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Maria."
St. Athanasius, died 373 > "Thou, O Lady, were filled with grace, so that thou might be the way of our salvation and the means of ascent into the heavenly kingdom."
Psalm 131:8 > "Arise, O Lord, into Thy resting place: Thou and the ark, which Thou hast sanctified." (The Blessed Virgin bodily in Heaven)
Star of the Sea
and Portal of the Sky
Truth of the super-natural order: All grace starts with God, goes to the hands of the Blessed Virgin, and then into the world. God (Grace Himself) came into the world by the Blessed Virgin, God never changes, all grace follows the same path to this day and until the end of the world.
Click on counter for > Map location of visitors ... Visit details ... Sections visited ... Referrering sites, etc.
Ignorance of God's Catholic Dogma ... which is being aggressively hidden with malice ... is not a "loophole" into Heaven.
Mountains of proof in Sources of Dogma and Scripture ... links > Section 5.1 and
Section 5.1.1
