Ninth Sunday After Pentecost The Gospel Luc.19. v. 41. Monday Meditation: A Plaine Path-way To Heaven Thomas Hill 1634

ANGELICO, Fra 
Deposition from the Cross (detail) 
1437-40
GOSPEL Luke 19. 41-47. 
At that time, when Jesus drew near to Jerusalem, seeing the city, He wept over it, saying: If thou also hadst known, and that in this thy day, the things that are to thy peace: but now they are hidden from thy eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, and thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side; and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee; and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation. And entering into the temple, He began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought, saying to them: It is written, “My house is the house of prayer.” but you have made it a den of thieves. And He was teaching daily in the temple.
Monday Meditation

Jesus wept upon the City, & said to it: If thou didst know in this thy day of peace, that is to say, if thou didst foresee in this thy day of peace, and prosperity, the day of thy visitation, when God will visit and punish they sins,thou wouldest visit thy self and thy sins before hand,to prevent the severe & rigorous visitation of God. General speeches are not (as Aristotle sayth) so profitable as particular, nor those that concern others so moving and profitable unto us, as those that concern ourselves.

Wherefore to leave Cities, Towns, Kingdoms, yea and particular persons of others, which yet must not be so left but that sometimes we must bewail them as well as ourselves, let us come to ourselves, and say to ourselves as Christ said to Jerusalem: O my soul, if thou didst know the strict and severe visitation of God upon thee, when his say is, which thou knowest not how soon it will be, & peradventure it may be even now in this thy day of peace and security,(as thou thinkest, visit, examine and judge thy own self, and thy sins;and to prevent the rigorous visitation of God before hand, wouldest search every corner and creek of thy Conscience (there being very many secret and abstruse corners and creeks therein) with a candle in thy hand, as narrowly as the woman in the Gospel did her lost groat, knowing that so almighty God did threaten Jerusalem to do unto her, saying by the Prophet Sophonias: I will search Jerusalem with lanterns, as was truly verifies of it in the destruction thereof, in that rigor, as never the like was ever heard of in the world: by which City was signified every soul that falleth into the hands and visitation of God, and doth not prevent it by her own visitation of her self, in her own day,that is to say, before the day of our Lords visitation shall steal upon it.

Wherefore, for as much as our soul is compared to a City that hath many streets, lanes, and blind alleys, and corners in it, and in particular to the City of Jerusalem: let us walk through all the streets & lanes, and alleys thereof, and peruse every corner & creek thereof, and see what we can find that may displease the all-seeing and most pure eyes of almighty God.

Let us walk through the street of our eyes, and examine all the wanton, lascivious, scornful, proud, disdainful, and envious; looks, and glances thereof.

Let us walk through the street of our taste, & examine all the gluttonous curiosities,and delicacies therein, both in quantity and quality; our excesses in eating and drinking, and pampering our rebellious flesh, which should be kept under; our anger, murmuring, & impatience when we have far more then we should; our breaking or bad keeping the fasts of the Church; our forgetting the poor, as Dives the Rich glutton did poor Lazarus, and the sins that have proceeded thereof.

Let us walk through the street of our hearing, of giving ear & countenance pleasingly to detraction, and extenuation of other men's fame, behind their backs, buying & selling their even-Christian at their pleasure; ill merchants, hearing lascivious, and wanton speeches, tales songs, and the like.

Let us walk through the street of our tongue, & behold all the idle, vain, unprofitable, dissolute, vain-glorious, proud, scornful, reproachful, uncharitable, detractorious, unclean, immodest, malepart, imperious swearing, cursing, flattering, dissembling, lying, and other impertinent speeches thereof.

Let us do the like of all our other outward, and inward senses, hands, feet, and other parts of our body, and mind, and no doubt but we shall be moved to deplore our sins, & weep over ourselves, as Christ did over Jerusalem, teaching us thereby what we should do, and to follow the counsel of St. Paul to the Romans, which is this, that As we have given our members to serve uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity, so from henceforth to give the same members to serve righteousness unto holiness & sanctification.



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