"And as they drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, 'If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that belong to your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.'" (Luke 19:41,42 ).

"'Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.... For if they do these things in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?" ( Luke 23:28,31).

Jesus wept over Jerusalem. The women wept over Him, and He told them to weep for themselves and for their children. Grief at a moment of triumph, grief at a moment of desolation.

There is irony in the Palm Sunday story, for over its rejoicing hangs the shadow of the betrayal, trial and crucifixion. Was the angry crowd that called for His crucifixion the same multitude that hailed Him as King five days earlier? Why did the Lord ride in triumph, knowing the things that would surely come to pass? He did so to announce that He, the Divine truth from the Divine good, would rule all things; to give us a picture which will stand for all time of His majesty. And then the events of Gethsemane and Calvary let us know the nature of that majesty - that indeed His kingdom is not of this world.

Can we picture the scene on Palm Sunday? The multitudes were rejoicing and shouting, and then they saw their King weeping. This was not a brief moment, but a sustained weeping, which caused the writer of the gospel to hear of it. Did their shouting die down as they watched His grief, did they wonder when He pronounced doom upon the city they lived in? "Your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children with you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another because you did not know the time of your visitation." Then, perhaps, as He rode on, the cheering resumed, and the strange words were forgotten.

There is yet another irony; for the people shouted that peace had come. "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!" Yet when Jesus wept, He said to the city, "If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes."

This grand panorama speaks of the world inside each human being. It is in our minds, in the spiritual sense of the Word, that Jesus rides in triumph. When we see the wonder of His truth, sense its power over all things, we crown Him. All the events of Palm Sunday tell of those times when we acknowledge that the Lord, the visible God, rules our minds through the Word which is within us. It is a time of great rejoicing. Like the multitudes of Palm Sunday, we feel that this vision will sweep all that is evil away, and the Lord will easily reign within us as our King and our God.

Such happy times do come to us, and we can rejoice in them, and hail our Lord and King with jubilation. "Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest!" Peace comes through conjunction with the Lord whom we have seen (Apocalypse Explained 369:9, 11). Yet the Lord Himself knows that there are battles to come from those who know no peace. This too He warns us of in His Word. In the natural Jerusalem of the Lord's day the rulers had used falsity to destroy the truth, and they brought much grief upon the Christians. In the spiritual Jerusalem in our minds there are false values which would destroy peace. Before we get to heaven there is going to be a battle between our vision of the Lord and our self love which will abuse the truth to make that happen.

So the Lord wept, out there on the mount of Olives, as He looked down upon the city. His weeping was a sign of mercy, for He grieves over the states in us which will hurt us and which are opposed to our peace. (Arcana Coelestia 5480; Apocalypse Explained 365 [9]; cf. 365:11, 340). Yet His grief is an active force, it is mercy, working to eliminate those states. Jesus promised that Jerusalem would be utterly destroyed - not a single stone left standing. It is true that the natural Jerusalem was razed to the ground, but this is not what He meant. He promises us - even as He warns us of the battles to come - that He will triumph, and that our Jerusalem - our excuses for doing evil - will not stand. They will be decimated by His Word. (Cf. Arcana Coelestia 6588 [5]; Apocalypse Explained 365 [9]).

He wept from mercy, and He promised an end to weeping, for "His tender mercies are over all His works."

On Good Friday there was surely cause for weeping. Picture this scene: The women were following the cross, lamenting. Jesus must have been bleeding from the whipping, and scarred by the crown of thorns. He was surrounded by people who enjoyed seeing someone die. Those who called Him their enemy were satisfied that they had won.

His followers were desolate. Never had they imagined that the dream He had fostered would end this way, or the Leader they loved would be treated so terribly. They felt for Him in what they were sure was His suffering. They wept for Him.

Then perhaps the crowds that insulted Him were stilled as He turned to the mourners. Out of His infinite love He spoke. "'Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.'" He did not think of His approaching agony, He grieved for those He loved. He would triumph. It was upon them that suffering would come. What clearer picture can we have of the goal which brought our God to earth than that sentence? He came because evil people and evil feelings bring misery to His children. He came to give them joy after their weeping, to give them consolation and hope, and finally to give them the certainty that there should be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying.

The women of that time did indeed face physical sorrow. It is heartbreaking to learn of the persecutions of the Christians, to think of people killed because they worship their God; of children being taken from them, of good people subject to the mercy of those who know no mercy. Indeed it must have seemed that the Lord was right in saying that it would have been better had they never borne children who would suffer so for their faith. "For indeed the days are coming in which they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which never nursed!'"

But the real reason the Lord came down to earth was that within physical cruelty there is a far greater hurt. There are plenty of people walking this earth who wouldn't think of murdering someone else, but who regularly enjoy taking away something far more precious - his ability to follow his Lord.

That was why the Lord spoke those words, "Weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children." The daughters of Jerusalem represent the gentle love of truth with sincere people all over the world. Their children are the charity and faith which comes from the love of truth. These are the casualties of evil, especially when it infests a church. These are the things that cause internal weeping, a sorrow of the spirit that is the more devastating because it is silent.

"Daughters of Jerusalem," He called them. Our innocent love of the truth grows up together with our justification for being selfish. In fact, it is ruled by self justification, as the daughters of Jerusalem were ruled by a corrupt church. When those women tried to break loose from the Jewish Church they were persecuted. When our innocent love of the truth seeks to lead us to follow the Lord we suffer temptations in our spirits. The hells rise up and tempt us with all the selfish and evil delights we have ever had, and we indeed weep for ourselves.

You see, it is not the truth itself that suffers! "Weep not for Me," Jesus said. The truth is all powerful. It is our love for that truth which is tempted. It is our charity and our faith - the children of that love - which suffer.

"For indeed the days are coming in which they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore, and the breasts which never nursed.'" Doesn't it seem to us at times that the people who have no truths, who have no ideals, are the ones that are happy? In fact this is a prophecy that those who are outside of the Church and find it afresh will have an easier time than those who bring the falsities of life into the battle.

On Palm Sunday, when Jesus wept, He said that Jerusalem would be destroyed. As I have said, He was actually promising the destruction of evil in us. On Good Friday He gave the same assurance: "Then they will begin 'to say to the mountains, "Fall on us!" and to the hills, "Cover us!"' These apparently harsh words are ones of comfort, for they promise that as the Lord's truth triumphs in us, heaven will draw nearer. When that happens the hells who tempt us will be unable to bear the presence of heaven, and will cover themselves over and hide.

"For if they do these things in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?" The listeners knew what that meant: if when He was among them they rejected His truth, what will they do when the memory of His presence and His miracles have dried up? In the internal sense the green wood is truth that is still alive from a love for it. Even when we see the ideals of the Word, we are going to struggle with temptation. But when that wood dries out, when we can't sense the life and power of truth, the battle becomes very much harder.

In both these images - His weeping on Palm Sunday, His sad warning to the women to weep for themselves and for their children, the Lord is preparing us to fight for what we believe. How does He prepare us? By assuring us, not only of the trials to come, but of the certainty of victory now that He has revealed His might. There is such wonder, such hope for eternal happiness in the true Christian religion. Yet no worthwhile love will ever be ours to keep until it has faced its challenges. There must be a time of weeping: our merciful Lord weeping over our struggles and giving us strength from mercy; our dreams and hopes weeping when we fear they are lost. Through the trial we express our commitment to our dreams, and He delivers us.

Less than twenty four hours before His arrest the Lord spoke again about weeping. At the Last Supper He said, "Most truly I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice." But He did not stop there. "And you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy. A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you."

When He was crucified and rose again, they must have thought that now His words were fulfilled. Now they had found the joy which no one could take from them. Perhaps when they suffered at the hands of persecutors and found joy among fellow-Christians they thought the same. And finally, when they had fought their private battles, and from His power overcome the enemy within, they knew what He really meant.

"Jesus wept over the city." "Weep for yourselves and for your children." Our love of the truth will be threatened and with it our hope for true faith and true charity. It was to that end that He came into the world and rode in triumph and drank of the cup of rejection and apparent death - to be able to turn our sorrow into joy. Therefore He could also say, "In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." Amen.

(რეკომენდაციები: Luke 19:29-44, 23:24-38)

56. What the people from Babylon are like in the other life is something which can only be known to one who has been allowed by the Lord to mix with them in the spiritual world. Since this has been granted to me, I can speak from experience, having seen and heard them and talked with them. Each person has after death a life similar to that he had in the world. This can only be changed as regards the delights of his love, which are turned into corresponding forms; this can be seen in two chapters of HEAVEN AND HELL 470-484, 485-490.

The life led by the people now under discussion is likewise exactly as it was in the world, but with the difference that the secrets of their hearts are then disclosed. For they are then in the spirit, which is where the more inward levels, those of thoughts and intentions, reside; and these they kept hidden in the world, covering them over with an outward show of holiness.

[2] Since these then were revealed, one could perceive that more than half of them, those who had usurped the power of opening and closing heaven, are completely godless. But because their minds cling to the power they exercised in the world, and this is based upon the principle that the Lord had all power given to Him by the Father, and this was then handed on to Peter, and in due succession to the prelates of the church, they still keep alongside their ungodliness the practice of confessing the Lord with the lips. But this only lasts so long as they can keep some power by its means. The rest, however, who are not godless, are so vacuous that they know nothing whatever about people's spiritual life, the means of salvation, the Divine truths which point the way to heaven, nor anything about heavenly faith and love, believing that by the Pope's favour heaven can be granted to anyone, no matter what sort of person he is.

[3] Each person has the same sort of life in the spiritual world as he had in the natural world, with no difference so long as he is not in heaven or in hell; this may be seen in HEAVEN AND HELL 453-480. In external appearance the spiritual world is exactly like the natural world (170-176). As a result their moral and civil lives are similar, and in particular their worship is similar, since it is rooted and clings to the inmost levels of a person; and no one can be diverted from it after death, unless he has the good which comes from truths and the truths which come from good. It is, however, more difficult to divert the people under discussion than other peoples from their form of worship, because they lack the good which comes from truths, not to mention the truths which come from good. The truths they have do not come from the Word with few exceptions, and these they have falsified by employing them to establish their power. As a result they have no good either, except a spurious kind of good; for the nature of truths determines the nature of good. These remarks are intended to convey the idea that the worship this group practises in the spiritual world is exactly the same as it was in the natural world.

[4] After this introduction I should like to report something about their worship and their life in the spiritual world. They have a Council chamber to replace the Council chamber or Consistory in Rome, where their leaders meet to deliberate about various ecclesiastical matters, above all how to keep the common people subject to blind obedience, and how to enlarge their power over them. This Council chamber is situated in the southern quarter near the eastern border. But no one who had been Pope in the world, nor any who had been a cardinal, dares to enter it, because by claiming for themselves in the world the Lord's power they have implanted in their minds an image of Divine authority. So as soon as they present themselves there, they are taken away and cast out to join their peers in the desert. Those of them, however, who were of upright character and had not so convinced themselves of that belief as to usurp such power, are in a dimly-lit room behind the Council chamber.

[5] They have another meeting-place in the western quarter near the north, where their business is the admission of the credulous common people into heaven. There they arrange around them a number of communities devoted to various outward pleasures. In some they go in for gaming, in some for dancing, in some for all kinds of jokes and amusements to make people smile, in some for friendly conversation, in one place talking about politics, in another about religious affairs, in another about indecent subjects, and so on. They admit their clients to one of these communities in response to their desire, calling that heaven. But after a few hours spent there they all become bored and go away because these are merely outward, not inward pleasures. Many are also thus led away from believing their teaching about being admitted to heaven.

[6] In detail their worship is almost the same as in the world. It consists, as in the world, of masses, which are held not in the ordinary language used by spirits, but in a concoction of high-sounding phrases which strikes terror into them by its outward sanctity, but remains unintelligible. They adore saints in the same way and display their statues. But the Roman Catholic saints are themselves nowhere to be seen, for all of them whose ambition was to be worshipped as deities are in hell, and the rest who had no such ambition are among the spirits of the common people. Their dignitaries are aware of this, for they seek out the saints and find them, and therefore come to disparage them. But they conceal this from the people, so that the saints can go on being worshipped as guardian deities, and the prelates themselves, who are in charge of the people, as lords of heaven.

[7] As in the world they similarly build numbers of churches and monasteries. They similarly amass wealth, collecting heaps of precious objects and hiding them in cellars. The spiritual world has precious objects just as much as the natural world, but many more of them. Similarly there they send out monks to induce peoples to adopt their religion, and thus make them subject to their rule. It is a widespread practice to have look-out towers constructed in the middle of their group, so that they can watch all the surrounding areas. By various tricks and devices they get in touch with people both near and far, and bind them with treaties to get them on their side.

[8] That is their general condition. But in detail most of the prelates of that religion rob the Lord of all power and claim it for themselves; and because they do this, they do not acknowledge the Divine. In outward show they put on a counterfeit appearance of holiness, holiness which is essentially a profanity, because it contains no inward acknowledgment of the Divine. As a result their outward holiness allows them to make contact with some communities of the lowest heaven and their inward profanity to make contact with the hells, so that they are in both places at once. For this reason they attract simple good spirits, giving them dwellings close to their own, and groups of malicious spirits, whom they arrange around their own group. In this way they are linked through the simple good with heaven and through the malicious with hell. Thus they devise unspeakable crimes which they commit under guidance from hell. For the simple good in the lowest heavens do not see beyond their external holiness, and their most devout adoration of the Lord in outward show, and so they are favourably disposed to them because they fail to see their crimes. This is their best protection; but still they all in course of time drop their outward show of holiness, and are then cut off from heaven and cast into hell.

[9] This will give some idea of what the people from Babylon are like in the other life. I know people in the world will be surprised at such things happening there, since they have only a vague and vacuous idea of people's condition after death and of heaven and hell. But a person is just as much a person after death, he lives in society as in the world, dwells in houses, listens to sermons in churches, performs duties and sees sights in that world similar to those in the one he has just left. All this can be proved from the reports in HEAVEN AND HELL of things seen and heard.