Week of November 2nd, 2025

Matthew 23:37–39
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

In the verses before this, Jesus spoke seven “woes” to the Scribes and Pharisees. They had rejected him. Yet, even when confronting their rejection, Jesus was filled with compassion, as we hear in the verses above.

Preaching on Jesus’ compassion in these verses, John Chrysostom, an early Church father, said this:
Jesus directs his speech to the city, in this way also being mindful to correct his hearers, and says, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” What does the repetition mean? This is a way of expressing his pity for her and bemoaning her and greatly loving her. Like a woman ever loved by him, but she has despised the One who loved her, and therefore she is at the point of being punished. Being now about to inflict the punishment, he pleads with her. This also the pattern of the prophets, who said, “Turn to me, and she returned not.”

Then having called her, Jesus tells of her blood-stained deeds, “You who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together . . . but you were not willing.” In this way he is also explaining his own dealings with her. Not even with these things has he turned her aside nor withdrawn his great affection toward her, but it was his desire even so, not once or twice but often, to draw her to himself. “How often have I longed,” he says, “to gathers your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” He says this to show that they were ever scattering themselves by their sins, He indicates his affection by simile; for indeed the hen is warm in its love toward its brood. Everywhere in the prophets it is this same image of the wings, and in the song of Moses and in the Psalms, indicating God’s great protections and care.
Taken from Treasury of Daily Prayer, p. 886

Jesus' love for his people - you! - knows no limits!