Do Not Weep for Me

DOMINUS VOBISCUM!

A great crowd of people followed him, including women who beat their breasts and lamented over him. Jesus turned to them and said: “Daughters of Jerusalem do not weep for me.” (Luke 23: 27)

The preceding Biblical passage from the gospel of Luke was a scene from OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST carrying His cross on the ascent to Golgotha that while doing so He was being ferociously flogged, savagely scourged, rabidly ridiculed and malevolently mocked with merciless impunity. Along the bloody journey, the suffering Son of Man encountered women that He addressed as “Daughters of Jerusalem”. The women were wailing and lamenting the extreme punitive measures and ferocious savagery heaped upon the holy and sacred divine flesh of the Rabbi at that pivotal point of the Passion. From a human point of view or applying the language of humanity or human logic, the sobbing or weeping of the “Daughters of Jerusalem” were normal human reactions of pity, sympathy and helplessness toward the brutally bashed Son of Man. The lamentation as depicted is understandable. Such outpouring of grief, sorrow and pity was met by an unsolicited verbal reaction from the visibly mauled Son of Man who uttered: “Do not weep for me. Weep for yourselves and for your children.” If the Rabbi was a mere mortal just like any terrestrial human person, His utterances hurled towards the wailing women may be construed as pure rhetoric or eloquence of heroism meant to generate sympathy for the cruel and unjustifiable punishment He was being subjected to and, on the other extreme, to generate ill-feelings and rage towards His executioners and those responsible for it. Nonetheless, there is a deeper meaning to it than just pure rhetoric or eloquence of speech.

“Do not weep for me. Weep for yourselves and for your children.”

These two preceding holy utterances that came out directly from the holy lips of a suffering God, if we apply what we learn from fundamental English grammar, are imperative sentences. Therefore, they were commands. They were orders. They were not requests. He did not use the word, “please”. They were commands frontally given by the Supreme Being. He commanded or ordered the wailing women to stop their lamentation towards Him. Instead, He ordered them to lament for themselves and for their children. He did not need human pity, sympathy or sorrow at that moment of humanly unbearable pain and mutilation because not only did He will it so. He was not going to die a natural death as human beings do. He is God. The sobbing women thought otherwise.

Heroes are human persons who gave their lives for their country and people for whatever terrestrial reason and some even revered them as deities. When heroes die their bodies decompose and mix with the dust. They do not resurrect. No hero of any country in this terrestrial world has ever resurrected. They do not have such power because they are not divine. They were human.

OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST was not a hero because He was not human. He is God. He is more than a hero. The life He gave was not human but divine. It is divine life that is not consumable. Hence, He laid down His life but He did not die the way heroes die. He exhibited His divinity in rapid succession from beginning to end of His public ministry that climaxed with His Resurrection where the mercilessly brutalized and mangled divine flesh metamorphosed to a radiant and glorious divine body that a doubting gangster of an apostle was privileged not just to look at but to touch and even probe.

There was no entry in any of the four gospels of the evangelists that the “blessed among women” ever wept from the Passion up to the burial. There was no entry in the gospels that the “blessed among women” attended to His burial or ever visited the tomb of the Son of God. It is because there was no death that occurred. the virgin from Nazareth cannot be hypocritical. The Son of Man just slept as a divine Person who never needed oxygen to survive. The “blessed among women” knew it even before it happened. If ever she felt sorrow, it was not for the Son of Man who is God. It was for the human persons who foolishly condemned and executed the Son of God.

“Why are you weeping?” The angels who are not mortal beings asked it to Mary Magdalene who was sobbing near the tomb of the Rabbi. Moments later, OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST appeared and mistaken by Mary Magdalene as the gardener asked the same question. Obviously, Mary Magdalene succumbed to the prevailing public opinion then that the Son of Man died on the cross and His body was stolen that was why she was severely shattered and out of her sensibilities. She just recovered her wits when the Rabbi called her by her name. She suddenly recognized the voice that changed her life forever. Her deathly grief turned to ecstatic joy in an instant.

The battered and butchered Son of Man simply went into a breathless slumber that only God like Him can do. He rested for a while after the accomplishment of His mission that was why He ordered or commanded the “Daughters of Jerusalem” to halt their lamentation during the dramatic phase of the Passion. It was also for the same reason the Son of Man and His loyal angels upon the Resurrection questioned the tearful and mournful act of Mary Magdalene near the tomb. If there was death of God that transpired then even the angels of God who are His loyal subjects would also lament and wail just as Mary Magdalene did. But they did not. They were perplexed with her unabashed sobbing. They even questioned the former adulteress why she wept. Evidently, the Rabbi did not die as is being propagated as gospel truth by Christians worldwide.

He ordered the “Daughters of Jerusalem” not to weep for Him because the whole exercise was just like a hazing ritual in a fraternity initiation to Him. He will just wake up from it in glory and He did so. He ordered them to weep for themselves and for their children because they were all going to die a natural death unlike Him.

The virgin from Nazareth never wept and did not bother to attend the burial or did not bother to visit the tomb because the divine Person whom she carried in her womb and addressed her “woman” and never “mother” was God upon whom the curse of natural death do not apply. The mangled, brutalized and bloodied body instead of rotting took the opposite route. He woke up radiant and clean as if He just took a bath. “His ways are not our ways.”.

Peace to everyone!