Annotation CLXII

”Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not over me, etc.” — Luke 23:28

Whether the death of Christ is to be mourned.

Theophylact, elucidating this clause, says: “Women, indeed, are a kind of people easily weeping and wailing; as though something grievous had befallen the Lord, they weep, showing forth great compassion, and lamenting the injustice. But he does not approve, but rather rebukes them. For he was suffering voluntarily. And it is not fitting to lament him who suffers willingly and for the salvation of all: but it is congruous that he should rather be extolled and celebrated with praises. For through the cross both death was destroyed, and hell made captive. For laments, for those who suffer willingly, bring no consideration [do not befit them]. Therefore the Lord rebukes those who were mourning him.” Erasmus, from these words, gathers that it is not lawful for a Christian man to weep over the Passion of Christ, and to follow his death with tears; because Christ willed his death to be not mournful, but glorious, and did not wish [it] to be deplored, but adored — as [a death] which was undertaken willingly for the salvation of the whole world.

He confirms this opinion by the testimony of Bede, who in book 6 of the commentaries on Luke writes thus: “‘Do not lament me,’ says Christ, ‘as about to die — [me] whose swift resurrection can dissolve death, whose death is about to destroy both all death, and the very author of death.’” Again he joins Ambrose to Bede; who, although he passes over this discourse of the Lord to the women, yet at the mention of the cross at once bursts into triumphal, not mournful, words: “But now let the victor raise his trophy,” he says. And then, “Now, since we have already seen the trophy, let the triumpher mount his chariot,” etc. This opinion of Erasmus the Faculty of the Paris theologians, in the censures which it published on the works of Erasmus, orders to be held among the impious and heretical dogmas. It indicates also that the aforesaid authorities of the fathers are to be taken in that sense in which Christ said to the mourning women: “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not over me, but weep over yourselves.”

By which words, indeed, he did not forbid himself to be wept over by the women of Jerusalem — [wept over] prudently and becomingly, out of a certain pious affection of charity. For it is not credible that Christ, in these [women], either forbade or reproved what the feeling of a compassionate nature suggests, [what] the reasoning of friendship urges, and [what] the divine oracles of the prophets had foretold would be. For — to omit the rest — the sword of grief, according to Simeon’s prophecy,¹ pierced through the soul of Mary [his] mother at the death of the Son: and let no one believe that her grief and tears were condemned by Christ, unless he be utterly foolish. Therefore Christ forbade to the daughters of Jerusalem another kind of weeping — namely, some blind and undue [weeping] of the little women

—an undue and unseemly mourning: [these women] — not yet recognizing the divine power of the Son of God, and [his] ineffable charity — [seeing] that he, willing and gladly, of his own accord hastened to death for the salvation of his own, wept over him as [over] an infirm and feeble man, suffering dire and unworthy [things] with an unwilling mind, and not able to defend himself from hostile injuries. Restraining this kind of unworthy weeping, Christ admonishes [them] that they rather weep, by this manner of mourning, over themselves and their sons — over whom [there] hung an ineluctable calamity, and the inevitable destruction of the city. From these [things] it is clear that Christ did not forbid, nor condemn, the pious and religious custom of mourning by which the Christian Church every year concelebrates the memory of the Passion and death of Christ with mournful pomp and tearful ceremonies. For the Church, taught by the Spirit of Christ, knows [it] to be fitting that her sons — who are members of Christ — be conformed to Christ [their] head, grieving and suffering, condoling and compassionating. And accordingly she instituted this kind of weeping-rite, in which she commanded, chiefly and most of all, that our sins be mourned — the expiation of which drove Christ into death. This the prophet Zacharias too especially admonished, saying:² “All the tribes of the earth shall wail over him.” For he did not say only, “They shall wail [over] him,” but “They shall wail over themselves, over him” — that is, [because of] their own crimes, laid upon him who by his own death paid the penalty of them.