Large numbers of people followed him, and women too, who mourned and lamented for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, weep rather for yourselves and for your children. For look, the days are surely coming when people will say, Blessed are those who are barren, the wombs that have never borne children, the breasts that have never nursed! Then they will begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us, and to the hills, Cover us!"
The Jewish books tell us that in Jerusalem there were women who would stand along the road with sedatives to give to criminals who were being taken to execution. We know that Jesus didn't accept this offer because later on the cross, when someone put a sedative soaked sponge on a stick up to his mouth, he refused it. My goodness! What a witness to a country with an insatiable thirst for drugs.
Jesus rejecting the sedatives also gives us insight to his awake-ness: Jesus in charge, conscious self-gift, aware, fully-experienced. See the ads and commercials - a pill or gadget for every conceivable discomfort and complaint. The rule book for the Camaldolese monks says: We don't run to the medicine cabinet for every ache and pain.
