Jesus Wept

Jesus Wept
By Enrique Simonet

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes … because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”
Luke 19:41-42, 44

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This painting was a study for Simonet’s monumental masterpiece He Wept Over It (Flevit super illam), which depicts the scene in Luke where Jesus pauses with his disciples on the Mount of Olives during their journey to Jerusalem, on what would later be known as Palm Sunday, to weep over the impending destruction of Jerusalem, and the suffering the people would face after His death. It is fitting that Holy Week, which ends with the Savior’s crucifixion and subsequent resurrection, begins with Jesus standing near Gethsemane, grieving over the coming suffering of those at whose hands He would shortly suffer and be killed, and highlights that none of us are beyond the reach of Christ’s mercy.

This painting captures the compassion for mankind that was so critical to Christ’s redemptive mission. The word “compassion” literally means “to suffer with” or “to suffer together.” Thus, this moment is linked with the only other instance of Jesus weeping found in the Gospels – mourning with Mary and Martha at the grave of their brother Lazarus, shortly before raising Lazarus from the dead, but honoring and recognizing the real grief the sisters nonetheless felt. There, as here, His grief is linked to the pain of others, for He bears them alongside us. We can sometimes misunderstand the words of Isaiah, that Christ is a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” and fail to see that the sorrows and grief He has suffered are our own, and that He stands with us at the mountain of our trials, ready to comfort and succor us in them.

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