Behold your house, &c. That Isaiah , the Temple, says S. Jerome and Theophylact; but more correctly, the city of Jerusalem and the whole region of Judea, which, as the punishment of such black ingratitude, was to be laid waste by the Romans , under Titus. There is an allusion to Jer. xii7 , "I have left my house, I have forsaken my inheritance." For when Jerusalem was forsaken by God, it became the synagogue of Satan, and so the prey of the Roman eagles under Titus and Vespasian, who partly slew the Jews, partly led them away captive, and partly scattered them over the whole world.
For I say unto you, &c. "I will withdraw Myself from you into Heaven; and ye shall see Me no more upon earth, until the Day of judgment, when I will condemn your unbelief." Some take this verse to refer to Christ"s solemn entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, when the Jews cried aloud to Him, Hosanna, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. But this is clearly an erroneous opinion, for this triump...
That which has been spoken possesses an interpretation that comes through the vision of faith. For when “the fullness of the nations come in” and they believe in Christ, then the Jews who believe after these things see the beauty of the divine nature of Christ. They behold the Father in the Son and declare him to be the Redeemer proclaimed through the prophets, whom the prophets previously mentioned as coming in the name of the Lord. For the other prophets did not come in the name of the Lord. For they were saying, “The Lord says these things” and “I am the servant of the Lord, and I worship the God of heaven.”
Behold, your house. Their house shall be deprived of the protection of the God of heaven. He it was that had hitherto preserved them, and he also would inflict upon them those very severe judgments they so much dreaded. (St. Chrysostom, hom. lxxv.)
But ye would not, He says. Behold your house is left desolate, Matthew 23:38 stripped of the succor which comes from me. Surely it was the same, who also was before protecting them, and holding them together, and preserving them; surely it was He who was ever chastening them. And He appoints a punishment, which they had ever dreaded exceedingly; for it declared the entire overthrow of their polity.
“For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ” This is the language of one that loves earnestly. He is poignantly appealing to them in relation to the judgment that is to come. He is not merely warning them concerning their past follies. He is now speaking of the future day of his second coming. So did this occur? Did they not see him from that time? He was speaking of the time up to his crucifixion.They had been continually accusing him of being a foe to God. He can do nothing now but show them who he is, as Son of the Father, in full accord with the Father’s will. He indicates himself to be the very one expected by the prophets. This is why he uses the same words as did the prophets. In this way he intimated both his resurrection and his second coming. He made all this plain even to the utterly unbelieving but even more surely to all who would worship him. The Gospel of Matthew, Homily
