Lent with Bossuet – Meditations on the Gospel (25)

Source: FSSPX News

Detail from “Christ with the Cross” (c. 1590) – Greco

The Blindness of the Jews

“Behold, I will lay a stone in the foundation of Sion, a tried stone, a corner stone, a precious stone founded in the foundation” (Isa.28:16), upon God Himself.

And this stone, so precious and so important for the construction of the edifice, will not be placed there without contradiction. Because for you, oh children of God drawn from the Gentiles according to the councils of His eternal predestination, for you this will be a stone of sanctification, resembling the one upon which Jacob had slept his mysterious sleep, and which was anointed with oil to be a monument to the glory of God (Gen. 28:18).

But it will be a stone against which you will stumble “for a stone of stumbling, and for a rock of offence to the two houses of Israel, for a snare and a ruin to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And very many of them shall stumble and fall, and shall be broken in pieces, and shall be snared, and taken” (Isa. 8:14-15).

 The Christ was to be this unique and fundamental stone. Nevertheless, at the same time, He was to be a scandal to Jerusalem: “unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block,” said St. Paul (I Cor. 1:23). “Whosoever shall fall upon that stone, shall be bruised; and upon whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder” (Luke 20:18), said the Lord.