Jesus’ Lament for the Daughters of Jerusalem
(Lk 23:26-31)

As he carried his cross along the Way of Sorrows, Jesus stopped to express concern for a group of women who stood along his path, lamenting his death. According to Roman law, women were not allowed to prepare for burial the bodies of those executed as criminals, nor could they engage in the mourning rites so essential to a proper funeral. What the women could not give later, they would give now in an expression of love and grief. But Jesus’ concern is not for his approaching torture and death but for the sufferings that are so widespread among women.

Daughters of Jerusalem, don’t weep for me, but weep for yourselves and your children.” (Luke 23:28)

He speaks of the vulnerabiity of women when they are pregnant or nursing a young child and of the horrors they endure in times of war. Already severely beaten and humiliated, he turns his attention to those who are even more marginalized than he. Luke’s account makes Jesus a fellow sufferer with the lot of women, willing to have them weep for themselves rather than for him. With them, he has known beating, vilification, insult, ridicule, mockery, demeaning trivialization, the twisting of words, emotional abuse and ultimately death. He too was deprived of justice even though the Roman governor declared him to be innocent of all the charges brought against him. Thus he is equipped to be the Savior of women because he, although a male, has undergone similar outrage and afflictions.

It was precisely Jesus’ sufferings that made this a supreme opportunity to address himself so clearly to the abuse of women and children. Surely this concern must be understood as encompassing a universal concern for violence against women and children, wherever and whenever it occurs.