Catholic Commentary
Jesus Teaching Daily in the Temple
37Every day Jesus was teaching in the temple, and every night he would go out and spend the night on the mountain that is called Olivet.38All the people came early in the morning to him in the temple to hear him.
Luke 21:37–38 describes Jesus' daily pattern during his final week in Jerusalem: teaching in the temple each day and spending nights on the Mount of Olives. The passage shows how all the people eagerly sought him at dawn in the temple to hear his teachings, establishing a rhythm of public proclamation and nighttime prayer that foreshadows his Passion.
Jesus teaches all day in the Temple and prays alone on the Mount all night—establishing the rhythm that still shapes the Church's liturgy and every Christian's life.
This image — all the people arriving at dawn at the Temple to hear the Word — is saturated with Old Testament resonance. It echoes the early morning sacrifices of the Mosaic cult (Ex 29:39), the dawn-seeking of the Psalmist ("O God, you are my God, for you I long; for you my soul is thirsting... My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water," Ps 63:1–2), and the wisdom tradition in which disciples literally wait at the doorposts of Wisdom's house (Sir 14:23; Prov 8:34). The people's early-morning seeking of Jesus is itself a form of worship, a liturgical act. Luke is showing us that the Word Incarnate is drawing Israel to Himself in the very precincts where Torah was always proclaimed.
The Typological/Spiritual Senses
Allegorically, this daily rhythm prefigures the structure of the Church's liturgical life: the Liturgy of the Word (Jesus teaching in the Temple) and the Liturgy of the Hours (the night prayer on Olivet). Anagogically, the dawn-seeking crowd anticipates the eschatological gathering of all peoples before the Word in the heavenly Jerusalem. Tropologically, the passage calls every Christian to imitate both the praying Christ and the eager crowd — to alternate between active witness and contemplative prayer, and to seek the Word with the urgency of those who rise before dawn.
Catholic tradition finds in this compact passage a rich theology of the Word, prayer, and the Church's liturgical life.
The Word in the Temple as Eucharistic Anticipation. The Catechism teaches that "the liturgy of the word and the liturgy of the Eucharist together form 'one single act of worship'" (CCC 1346). Luke's portrait of Jesus teaching in the Temple daily — followed immediately in Luke 22 by the institution of the Eucharist — invites a reading of these verses as a theological prelude to the Mass itself. The people's eager, early-morning gathering to "hear Him" foreshadows every congregation that assembles at dawn (or any hour) to receive the Word before the altar.
The Night Prayer of Christ and the Liturgy of the Hours. The Church has always understood Christ's nocturnal prayer on Olivet as the root of the Divine Office. Sacrosanctum Concilium (§83–84) teaches that "the Divine Office is truly the voice of the Bride addressing her Bridegroom... the very prayer which Christ himself, together with his Body, addresses to the Father." Jesus bivouacking on the Mount of Olives is the origin-point of this unceasing prayer. St. John Paul II, in Novo Millennio Ineunte (§32), urges Catholics to learn this "contemplative face of Christ" — the face turned toward the Father in the night watches.
The Laos as Type of the Church. St. Cyril of Alexandria (Commentary on Luke, Homily 138) notes that the wholehearted turning of the people to Jesus, in contrast to the murderous plotting of the rulers, prefigures the Church gathered from all nations while the old religious establishment hardens in rejection. The dawn-seekers are a type of the baptized faithful who, having been enlightened (photisthentes, cf. Heb 6:4), cannot but rush to the Light.
These two verses offer a concrete, countercultural pattern of life to contemporary Catholics. Jesus moves between two places: the public square (Temple) and the place of solitary prayer (Olivet). He does not collapse these into one, nor does He neglect either. Many Catholics today feel the tension between an active, apostolic life and the life of prayer — and tend to let one crowd out the other. Luke's Jesus does neither: the depth of the night on Olivet is precisely what empowers the boldness of the day in the Temple.
Practically, this passage is an invitation to examine your own daily rhythm. Where is your "Temple" — the place or relationship or work where you proclaim, serve, or witness? And where is your "Olivet" — the specific, regular, non-negotiable time of silent prayer, even brief, that precedes and sustains everything else? The detail that the people rose before dawn to seek Jesus is also a quiet challenge to our ordering of priorities: what do we seek first, before the noise of the day begins? In an age of perpetual digital stimulation, the image of a crowd choosing to rise early to "hear Him" is quietly radical — and deeply inviting.
Commentary
Luke 21:37 — The Temple by Day, Olivet by Night
Luke's opening word, kathʼ hēmeran ("every day"), is deliberate and emphatic. This is not a single episode but a sustained pattern covering the final week of Jesus' public ministry (cf. Lk 19:47; 20:1). Luke has carefully structured the Jerusalem section of his Gospel around this daily teaching in the Temple, and here he provides a formal summary statement that brackets it. The Temple in Jerusalem was the axis of Israel's religious universe — the place where heaven and earth met, where Torah was expounded, where sacrifice was offered. By teaching daily in the Temple, Jesus implicitly claims this axis as His own domain: He is the new Solomon (Lk 20:41–44), the definitive interpreter of the Law, the one whose authority surpasses that of the scribes and chief priests who challenge Him throughout chapters 19–21.
The second half of Luke 21:37 — "every night he would go out and spend the night on the mountain called Olivet" — establishes the counterpoint. The Greek verb ēulidzeto (from aulízomai) means literally "to lodge in the open air" or "to bivouac," and it carries a sense of vulnerable, exposed dwelling. Jesus is not retreating to a comfortable inn. He sleeps outdoors, on the hillside, in the cold spring nights of Jerusalem. The Mount of Olives (Olivet) carries profound resonance: it is the mountain of royal lamentation and eschatological hope (cf. Zech 14:4; 2 Sam 15:30), the place where David fled weeping before Absalom — a type of Christ's own betrayal. It is also, crucially, the site of Gethsemane (Lk 22:39–46), where the pattern of nighttime prayer on this mountain will reach its agonizing climax. Luke is already, quietly, pointing toward the Passion.
This rhythm — Word proclaimed in the Temple by day, prayer on the mountain by night — is a portrait of the two inseparable poles of Jesus' life: mission and contemplation, active proclamation and receptive communion with the Father. The Fathers of the Church, notably St. Ambrose (Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam, Bk. X), saw in this alternation a model for the priestly and apostolic life: "He prayed at night that He might teach by day; He spent the night in prayer so that the day might overflow with grace."
Luke 21:38 — The People Rise Early
Verse 38 shifts the focus from Jesus to the crowds: pas ho laos — "all the people." This is a Lukan theological designation (appearing also in Lk 1:10; 2:10; 3:21; 19:48) that distinguishes the receptive laos (people of God, Israel) from the hostile (rulers) who seek to destroy Jesus. The people "come early in the morning" () — they rise before dawn, they rush to the Temple. The Greek verb has a quality of eagerness, of dawn-seeking. They do not wait for Jesus to summon them; they come to ().