LUKE 11:47 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
“Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.”
Some who were present at that time told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices — a recent atrocity that the crowd uses to raise the theodicy question: were these people worse sinners than other Galileans? Jesus explicitly rejects the sin-disaster causation while converting the question into a summons: unless you repent, you too will all perish. Their sudden death is not evidence of special guilt but of the universal urgency to repent.
Church Fathers on Luke 11:47
A reproof which exalts the meek is generally hateful to the proud man. When therefore our Savior was blaming the Pharisees for transgressing from the right path, the body of Lawyers were struck with consternation. Hence it is said, Then answered one of the lawyers, and said to him, Master, thus saying you reproach us also.
In what a grievous state is that conscience, which hearing the word of God thinks it a reproach against itself, and in the account of the punishment of the wicked perceives its own condemnation.
Now the Lawyers were different from the Pharisees. For the Pharisees being separated from the rest had the appearance of a religious sect; but those skilled in the Law were the Scribes and Doctors who solved legal questions.
Read all 28 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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