46._ Pernicious

For Jesus, all this is on the verge of happening. How is he going to shut up it? He must proclaim it throughout, and mainly in the own heart of Israel: in Jerusalem, and to its authorities. It is the culmination of his mission, his public manifestation in the "holy mount" --Zion --, as Yahveh were manifested formerly in the mount Sinai. Thus, then, he goes to Jerusalem mounted in an ass, as prophet Zachary announced that would come the new king of Israel, the Son of David; and he goes during the celebrations of Passover, commemorative of the liberation of Egypt and the revelation in the Sinai.

His message was also of liberation, of joy for everybody, and specially for the Jewish authorities; if the Temple were going to be destroyed, were to construct one new, incomparably ampler and beautiful one, "not done already by human hands". But the authorities, closed, obtuse, did not understand it, did not believe to him. "Theirs did not receive him".

(Neither they, nor so many so many others, that we have listened to his message and have not been able to believe it; we have considered it pernicious, deceptive, escapist, alienant, disturber, detrimental, absurd, fantastic, ingenuous, utopian. And sadder is when at the most theirs we have been, when, after "to have eaten in his plate", we have disappointed ourselves of him until getting even to perhaps betray him.)

He put them into inconvenience, he threatened them, he hurt their interests, he tried to snatch their power, their prerogatives, their seats of honor. That insignificant Nazarene was an agitator, a sedititious one, and heretic; he had to be eliminated.