Gospel: Luke 19:41-44
When Jesus had come in sight of the city, he wept over it, and said, “If only today you knew the ways of peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Yet days will come upon you, when your enemies will surround you with barricades, and shut you in, and press on you from every side. And they will dash you to the ground and your children with you, and not leave stone upon stone within you, for you did not recognize the time and the visitation of your God.”
Reflection:
“You did not recognize the time."
Time is more than simply the passing of the seconds on a clock. Our experience of time can vary according to circumstance, and so, time can drag or fly by. Moreover, time related to our lived experience also involves God’s intervention. Thus, in theology often time is divided into two key types: chronos and kairos. Chronos is the simple passage of the hours and days. Kairos, on the other hand, is graced time, God’s time. It’s his action of entering into our lives, into our history. Kairos is the “favorable time” (2 Cor 6:2); it is the passage of events according to God’s plan of salvation. Just as we can perceive ordinary time in different ways, we can be more or less alert to God’s time. Jesus laments the lack of awareness of the people around him. Thus, he says, “you did not recognize the time and the visitation of your God.” They have not recognized the day of salvation that has dawned with Christ’s birth. Many had not understood that the time of the Messiah had finally arrived.
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