The gospel for this coming Sunday, 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, is Jesus’ mini-apocalyptic message about the future of the Jerusalem Temple and the coming days. In yesterday’s post we set the stage for understanding the nature of the Lucan narrative that is our gospel reading. Today’s post explores the significance of the Jerusalem Temple, its history, and the potential impact of Jesus’ words: “All that you see here—the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.” 

The architectural entity known as the Jerusalem Temple was a complex institution. It played a central religious and cultic role in Israelite life, as well as functioning on a political level. It was a symbol of the national state of which Jerusalem was the capital during the pre-exilic period (Babylonian Exile), then of the semi-autonomous community of Judeans after the exile, and finally of the Jews who continued to live in Jerusalem and the surrounding territory, with sporadic periods of autonomy, in the centuries before its final destruction.