Behold, He is coming amid the clouds, and every eye will see Him. (Revelation 1:7)
While we were in Israel, my fellow pilgrims and I saw many of the places and things referred to in the Bible. We saw the hometown of Jesus Christ, and the place where He was born. We saw the Sea of Galilee. We saw the Jordan River. We saw the desert where Christ was tempted by the devil. We saw the pathway on which He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. We saw the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Temple Mount and Mount Calvary. We saw the tomb where Christ’s body lay.
Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets whom your fathers killed…This generation will be charged with their blood, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who died between the altar and the temple building. (Luke 11:47, 51)
Here is a line from a recent hit by a young lady called “Pink:”
“The quiet scares me ’cause it screams the truth.”
Maybe someday Pink will be called “the artist formerly known as Pink.” Apparently, even now, you are actually supposed to spell the name P!nk.
Regardless, she has expressed an important fact: In silence, the Truth speaks.
Tomb of Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, in the Kidron Valley
In the days of old, the Lord’s Temple in Jerusalem was the special sanctuary of truth-speaking silence.
The prophet Jehoaida convinced King Joash to raise money to maintain the Temple and keep it in good repair.
After Jehoiada died, however, the king and his princes forsook true worship and turned to idols.
Jehoida’s son Zechariah tried to call the people back to the Lord:
Why are you transgressing the Lord’s commands, so that you cannot prosper? Because you have abandoned the Lord, He has abandoned you. (II Chronicles 24:20)
For this, the king had Zechariah killed in the Temple court, and his blood stained the stones.
When the Lord Jesus was excoriating the scribes and Pharisees, He reminded them of this cold-blooded murder. Then He went on to say:
Woe to you, scholars of the law! You have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter.
What is the key to entering the holy Temple? What do the violent, the self-righteous, and the self-indulgent NOT have–so the door is locked to them?
The key that opens the House of God is humble, attentive silence.
Here is the first of four Lenten homilies on the seven deadly sins.
God put Abraham to the test. He called to him, “Abraham!” “Ready!” he replied. Then God said: “Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you.”
Early the next morning Abraham saddled his donkey, took with him his son Isaac, and two of his servants as well, and with the wood that he had cut for the holocaust, set out for the place of which God had told him.
On the third day Abraham got sight of the place from afar. Then he said to his servants: “Both of you stay here with the donkey, while the boy and I go on over yonder. We will worship and then come back to you.”
Don’t forget to recite the Act of Dedication to Christ the King today. Click here.
Father Mark White Blog 