30. The fox and the hen

[Life of Christ] [Previous] [Next]

The Cross was lifted up again for the Pharisees to view when Our Blessed Lord was in Galilee in the territory of Herod. The Pharisees who had already plotted His death attempted to agitate and disturb the Master, saying:

Go elsewhere, and leave this place;

Herod has a mind to kill Thee.

LUKE 13:31

The Pharisees were certainly not interested in the safety of Our Blessed Lord, but they were anxious to call Him to Judea, where He would fall more directly under the power of themselves and the Sanhedrin. Their story was certainly not an invention, for at the beginning of the public life, the Pharisees with the Herodians had plotted against His life. Furthermore, Herod’s conscience was already heavy with the murder of John the Baptist. The presence of the Divine Master, along with His popularity, disturbed Herod the more. The Pharisees were willing to become involved in the plot of Herod to rid his dominions of Christ; at the same time it would have prospered their own design to bring Him into Jerusalem to hasten His death.

Our Blessed Lord saw through the crafty design and sham friendliness of the Pharisees. He quickly dismissed them with the answer:

Go and tell that fox,

Behold, to-day and to-morrow I am to continue

Casting out devils,

And doing works of healing;

It is on the third day

That I am to reach My consummation.

LUKE 13:32

Israel, in the Old Testament, was described as the vineyard of the Lord; who better deserved the name of a despoiler of the vineyard than the fox who slew the precursor of the Messias? Herod, He added, need have no fears that His popularity would lead to political intrigue or revolution. His work of driving evil spirits from men possessed and the lifting-up of palsied limbs would continue. These harmless labors He would not interrupt until the time for His death and glory. “Today and tomorrow” indicated short periods of time, as they did in the prophet Osee. Then would come His Crucifixion and, at the end of that Crucifixion, He would say that His purpose in coming had been achieved. Only at the end of the third day, and not before it, would He finish His course. He knew the time of His own death, and He knew that the time had not yet come. The Pharisees, the Herodians, and the Sadducees who were entering into unholy alliance would not have their Victim until He would deliver Himself into their hands.

That He was in complete control of His life, He reaffirmed by saying that He would not die in Galilee, where He was then, but in Jerusalem:

There is no room for a Prophet to meet His death,

Except at Jerusalem.

LUKE 13:33

No matter how much Herod would try to kill Him, He would not alter the “Hour” set by His Father. To Jerusalem belonged the monopoly of killing the prophets. In that city would His Cross be erected. As for the menace to His life, Our Lord despised it. It was in the Holy City under Pontius Pilate He would be killed, and not in the provinces under Herod. The “Today, tomorrow, and the third day” was the exact period of time Our Savior needed to travel from Peraea, where He was, to Jerusalem. Nor did He say that He would “die,” but rather that He would “reach His consummation.” Once on the Cross in Jerusalem He would say, “It is achieved,” thus linking up the Divine Mission from the Father with His own will to preach, cast out devils, and then offer Himself as a propitiation for the sins of man. The same expression Our Lord used about consummating His life is repeated twice in the Epistle to the Hebrews, once as having His sufferings crowned by bringing men to salvation, and once:

His full achievement reached,

He wins eternal salvation

For all those who render obedience to Him.

HEBREWS 5:9

The mention of Jerusalem brought to His mind not only His death, but also His patriotic love of the city:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, still murdering the prophets

And stoning the messengers that are sent to thee,

How often have I been ready to gather thy children together,

As a hen gathers her brood under her wings,

And thou didst refuse it!

Behold, your house is left to you,

A house uninhabited.

I tell you,

You shall see nothing of Me until the time comes,

When you will be saying,

Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord.

LUKE 13:34, 35

Never was there an apostrophe uttered by a patriarch over a land or a city equal to the love which the Master showed for the city that was the appointed place of the Eternal, where the glory of God was to dwell, and which was to be the vehicle of revelation to all nations. His imagination turned from the fox to the hen as an example of civic love. The figure of the wings stretched out for shelter and warmth was common in the books of the Old Testament and in the prophets, but the tragedy was in His rejection by men. God said: “I would,” and men answered: “We will not.” The prophecy was fulfilled literally concerning Jerusalem within a generation. When Socrates was sentenced to death by the Athenian judges, the executioner who gave him the hemlock juice to drink wept as he passed it into his hands. Our Blessed Lord, being God, knew in advance that the rulers and judges of Jerusalem would sentence Him to death, and He wept over them. In the case of Socrates, the executioner wept over the executed, but here, it is the One Who is to be executed Who weeps over the executioners. Such is the difference between a philosopher and God.

Tremendous is the power of freedom: man has it always within himself to reject or accept the protecting and saving wings of God. So too, the God-man had it within Himself freely to offer His life for Jerusalem and the world. If He were compelled to suffer, it would be the height of injustice, nor would the Father accept a sacrifice offered reluctantly. Previously, Our Lord had called those who were willing to be shepherded by Him, His sheep; now He calls them His brood. Here as elsewhere the Cross was before Him, but it would be a perfecting, a consummation, a glory. Once again, He associated His Cross and His Resurrection; the two were never separated. He would go to the Cross not as a martyr but as a Victor. Certainly men would crown Him with thorns and fix Him to a Cross, but all this was on the human level. It would not happen before the Divinely appointed Hour. St. Peter, who was with Our Lord on this occasion, would later speak of the Divine side of His Crucifixion in his Pentecost sermon:

This Man you have put to death;

By God’s fixed design and foreknowledge,

He was betrayed to you,

And you, through the hands of sinful men,

Have cruelly murdered Him.

Jerusalem would reject Him on Good Friday after having accepted Him the preceding Sunday. Perhaps the triumphant entry would be a symbol of how Jerusalem would later on, at the end of the world, receive Him. The Apostle who describes himself as the one whom Jesus loved gave this interpretation of that Second Coming:

Behold, He comes with clouds about Him,

Seen by every eye,

Seen by those who wounded Him.

APOCALYPSE 1:7

The fox and the hen had met. The fox might now conspire with the Pharisees, as later on he would conspire with Pilate, to put the hen to death. But the Lord of History judges all by whether they devour like the fox, or gather like the hen. They who would not come under the wings of the hen, He warned, would be caught up by the talons of the devouring eagle of Rome.

[Life of Christ] [Previous] [Next]