The Three Weeks Part 3

We cannot fathom what the Bais Hamikdosh really was. We can only learn and read about it and hopefully try to understand a little. If you meet a kid that was an orphan all his life and tell him, today is a sad day, it's the day your father died. It won't come naturally to the kid for he doesn't know what a father means, or what he's missing by not having a father. In the above parable you can at least explain to the kid look at other kids and see what they have- that is what your missing. We don't have a Bais Hamikdosh for almost two thousand years it is almost unexplainable to us what went on there. R. Yitzchok Hutner points out that the Chazal, which lived after the second Bais almost never tried to describe what the first Bais Hamikdosh was like. They knew that the first bais hamikdosh was infinitely greater then the second one and that even them who lived 500 years later couldn't relate to it. Yet we were given three weeks to think about it and an even harder task- to mourn it. If someone were to tell us that he'll take away all our worries and there will be peace in the world, the doctors will find a cure for all diseases and we'll be able to live worry free, but the catch would be that Moshiach won't come. How many of us will be ready to sign on? I would. We are no better then the lady that wanted Moshiach should take away the Cossacks. Do we really want Moshiach? Or do we just want to live a peaceful life? Of course we must cry and mourn for all the tragedies that befell us through the years and at the same time understand what the real problem is and what is secondary. We must realize how far removed we are from concepts of what the Bais Hamikdosh was. We don't realize what it means to live with the Shechina to see Hashem clearly, and that's the biggest tragedy of this long golus. "