And I will pour - As He promised by Joel, “I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh” (Joel 2:28. See vol. i. pp. 193, 194), largely, abundantly, “upon the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem,” all, highest and lowest, from first to last, the “Spirit of grace and supplication,” that is, the “Holy Spirit” which conveyeth “grace,” as “the Spirit of wisdom and understanding” Isaiah 11:2 is “the Spirit” infusing “wisdom and understanding,” and the “Spirit of counsel and might” is that same Spirit, imparting the gift “of counsel” to see what is to be done and “of might” to do it, and the Spirit “of the knowledge and of the fear of the Lord” is that same “Spirit,” infusing loving acquaintance with God, with awe at His infinite Majesty. So “the Spirit of grace and supplication,” is that same Spirit, infusing grace and bringing into a state of favor with God, and a “Spirit of supplication” is that Spirit, calling out of the inmost soul the cry for a yet larger measure of the grace already given. Paul speaks of “the love of God poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us” Romans 5:5; and of “insulting the Spirit of grace” , rudely repulsing the Spirit, who giveth grace. Osorius: “When God Himself says, ‘I will pour out,’ He sets forth the greatness of His bountifulness whereby He bestoweth all things.”
And they shall look - with trustful hope and longing. Cyril: “When they had nailed the Divine Shrine to the Wood, they who had crucified Him, stood around, impiously mocking. But when He had laid down His life for us, “the centurion and they that were with him, watching Jesus, seeing the earthquake and those things which were done, feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God” Matthew 27:54. As it ever is with sin, compunction did not come till the sin was over: till then, it was overlaid; else the sin could not be done. At the first conversion, the three thousand “were pricked ‘in the heart.’ “when told that He “whom they had taken and with wicked hands had crucified and slain, is Lord and Christ” Acts 2:23, Acts 2:36. This awoke the first penitence of him who became Paul. “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” This has been the center of Christian devotion ever since, the security against passion, the impulse to self-denial, the parent of zeal for souls, the incentive to love; this has struck the rock, that it gushed forth in tears of penitence: this is the strength and vigor of hatred of sin, to look to Him whom our sins pierced, “who” Paul says, “loved me and gave Himself for me.” Osorius: “We all lifted Him up upon the Cross; we transfixed with the nails His hands and feet; we pierced His Side with the spear. For if man had not sinned, the Son of God would have endured no torment.”
And they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for an only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for a first-born - We feel most sensibly the sorrows of this life, passing as they are; and of these, the loss of an only son is a proverbial sorrow. “O daughter of My people, gird thee with sackcloth and wallow thyself in ashes,” God says; “make thee the mourning of an only son, Most bitter lamentation” Jeremiah 6:26. “I will make it as the mourning of an only son” Amos 8:10. The dead man carried out, “the only son of his mother and she was a widow,” is recorded as having touched the heart of Jesus. Alb.: “And our Lord, to the letter, was the Only-Begotten of His Father and His mother.” He was “the first-begotten of every creature” Colossians 1:15, and “we saw His glory, the glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” John 1:14. This mourning for Him whom our sins pierced and nailed to the tree, is continued, week by week, by the pious, on the day of the week, when He suffered for us, or in the perpetual memorial of His Precious Death in the Holy Eucharist, and especially in Passion-Tide. God sends forth anew “the Spirit of grace and supplication,” and the faithful mourn, because of their share in His Death. The prophecy had a rich and copious fulfillment in that first conversion in the first Pentecost; a larger fulfillment awaits it in the end, when, after the destruction of antichrist, “all Israel shall” be converted and “be saved.” Romans 11:26.
There is yet a more awful fulfillment; when “He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they which pierced Him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him” Revelation 1:7. But meanwhile it is fulfilled in every solid conversion of Jew pagan or careless Christian, as well as in the devotion of the pious. Zechariah has concentrated in few words the tenderest devotion of the Gospel, “They shall look on Me whom they pierced.” Lap.: “Zechariah teaches that among the various feelings which we can elicit from the meditation on the Passion of Christ, as admiration, love, gratitude, compunction, fear, penitence, imitation, patience, joy, hope, the feeling of compassion stands eminent, and that it is this, which we especially owe to Christ suffering for us. For who would not in his inmost self grieve with Christ, innocent and holy, yea the Only Begotten Son of God, when he sees Him nailed to the Cross and enduring so lovingly for him sufferings so manifold and so great? Who would not groan out commiseration, and melt into tears? Truly says Bonaventure in his ‘goad of divine love:’ ‘What can be more fruitful, what sweeter than, with the whole heart, to suffer with that most bitter suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ? ‘“