Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets
whom your fathers killed.
They thought that by building memorials to the prophets they would share in the honor of the prophets by expressing solidarity with them. But Jesus told them that they were actually in solidarity with those who killed the prophets. The building of these memorials did not mean that they lived their lives in accord with the messages given by those prophets. In fact, memorials were a safe option because they reflected the fact that the prophets could no longer speak their words of judgment. Implicitly they celebrated the silence of the prophets and were thus in the line of those who killed them.
Therefore, the wisdom of God said,
'I will send to them prophets and Apostles;
some of them they will kill and persecute'
in order that this generation might be charged
with the blood of all the prophets
shed since the foundation of the world
All of the prophets were in fact preparing the way the coming of Jesus himself. Like the landowner in the parable about the vineyard God sent messengers one after the other who were unheeded until he finally sent his Son as a last resort (see Matthew 21:33-46). But God was not surprised by the inevitable result. It had been his plan all along to bring things to a culmination in the death of Jesus where sin and evil could be fully unmasked and revealed.
The generation at the time of Jesus was largely unresponsive to the message of salvation he brought them. It should have been that the blood of Jesus spoke salvation for them. But for those who refused to turn to him it would indeed speak to their condemnation. There was not a neutral ground for those to whom Jesus had revealed himself. They could have sided with the prophets. But they sided with those who killed the prophets and followed in their footsteps.
This sin and evil was not a unique condition of that generation or those that preceded it. We understand from Paul that "all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God". We are meant to understand that we all bear the guilt for the death of Christ. Yet this blood guilt need not speak to our condemnation. It is meant to cover us for forgiveness and salvation. We could do nothing to earn that fact that Jesus gave himself to save us. But by faith we can receive it as a gift and allow it to change our lives.
Woe to you, scholars of the law!
You have taken away the key of knowledge.
You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter.
Even those well versed in the law of God were not situated to receive Jesus when he came, and had used their knowledge of the law to make it more difficult for others to recognize the messiah. It was not a problem with the law. It was a problem with the rebellious human heart that was desperate to maintain autonomy from God by all possibly means. The modern equivalent would be someone searching the Scriptures or the Catechism to justify behaviors and ideas to which they were already committed rather than truly being open to what was taught in the divine dispensation. This has been called cafeteria Catholicism and we rightly abhor it. Yet, probably, we are also in some measure guilty of it.
We need to approach God not out of self-righteousness, not in virtue of monuments that we build, but through faith. We need to approach him with the desire to listen rather than the desire to be reaffirmed in our preexisting biases. Only then will he be able to make the power of his Precious Blood do in us all that it can do and is meant to do.
If you, O LORD, mark iniquities,
Lord, who can stand?
But with you is forgiveness,
that you may be revered.
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