Love and Longing!

Thursday, October 30, 2025

Rom 8:31b-39; Lk 13: 31-35

Today’s Gospel highlights Jesus’ love and longing behind his lament for Jerusalem. 

The earnestness of Jesus’ love can be explored from three angles. 

Love That Challenges: In the beginning of the Gospel, when Jesus is cautioned about Herod’s plot to kill him, he exposes the ruler’s character by employing the word ‘fox.’ Jesus is not threatened by Herod’s attempts to silence him or his threats to kill him. On the contrary, Jesus was conscious of the danger that lay on his path and still moved on towards Jerusalem. In his life, what kept Jesus moving steadily was his love for people. It is from that love that Jesus stepped on the stumbling blocks to reach the cross.

Love That Laments: Hen and brood is a beautiful image for Jesus to make people realize God’s self-sacrificing and protective love for His people. Moreover, the image of the hen gathering her brood under her wings offers a beautiful description of God’s vulnerable love. While God embraced human vulnerability in the person of His Son even at the cost of his death, such love was left to writhe under unrequited love in the Old Testament and rejection in the New Testament. But such betrayal hardly changes who Jesus is, and he laments in love for Jerusalem. 

Love That Dies: In firmly journeying towards Jerusalem, we must not think that Jesus exhibited a fatalistic attitude. Instead, Jesus’ willingness to embrace the pain of the cross reflects his intentional choice to obey the will of his Father to salvage humanity. Thus, though the lamenting or crying Jesus appears more like a heartbroken lover, he only decides to move ahead. The grief-stricken Jesus is not the end of the story, but he becomes the love that saves. His genuine love culminates with his sacrifice on the cross, from where he makes his proclamation of love more authentic. Jesus lived the kind of love that was ready even to die.

God’s unconditional love and Jesus’ selfless sacrifice deserve our generous response.

Let us pray that we may gift God our loving, generous, and worthy response. 

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar