November 22, 2005
Memorial of Saint Cecilia, virgin and martyr
Psalm: Tuesday 50
Reading IDn 2:31-45
Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar:
“In your vision, O king, you saw a statue,
very large and exceedingly bright,
terrifying in appearance as it stood before you.
The head of the statue was pure gold,
its chest and arms were silver,
its belly and thighs bronze, the legs iron,
its feet partly iron and partly tile.
While you looked at the statue,
a stone which was hewn from a mountain
without a hand being put to it,
struck its iron and tile feet, breaking them in pieces.
The iron, tile, bronze, silver, and gold all crumbled at once,
fine as the chaff on the threshing floor in summer,
and the wind blew them away without leaving a trace.
But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain
and filled the whole earth.
“This was the dream;
the interpretation we shall also give in the king’s presence.
You, O king, are the king of kings;
to you the God of heaven
has given dominion and strength, power and glory;
men, wild beasts, and birds of the air, wherever they may dwell,
he has handed over to you, making you ruler over them all;
you are the head of gold.
Another kingdom shall take your place, inferior to yours,
then a third kingdom, of bronze,
which shall rule over the whole earth.
There shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron;
it shall break in pieces and subdue all these others,
just as iron breaks in pieces and crushes everything else.
The feet and toes you saw, partly of potter’s tile and partly of iron,
mean that it shall be a divided kingdom,
but yet have some of the hardness of iron.
As you saw the iron mixed with clay tile,
and the toes partly iron and partly tile,
the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile.
The iron mixed with clay tile
means that they shall seal their alliances by intermarriage,
but they shall not stay united, any more than iron mixes with clay.
In the lifetime of those kings
the God of heaven will set up a kingdom
that shall never be destroyed or delivered up to another people;
rather, it shall break in pieces all these kingdoms
and put an end to them, and it shall stand forever.
That is the meaning of the stone you saw hewn from the mountain
without a hand being put to it,
which broke in pieces the tile, iron, bronze, silver, and gold.
The great God has revealed to the king what shall be in the future;
this is exactly what you dreamed, and its meaning is sure.”
Responsorial PsalmDaniel 3:57, 58, 59, 60, 61
R. (59b)
Give glory and eternal praise to him.“Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord,
praise and exalt him above all forever.”
R.
Give glory and eternal praise to him.“Angels of the Lord, bless the Lord,
praise and exalt him above all forever.”
R.
Give glory and eternal praise to him.“You heavens, bless the Lord,
praise and exalt him above all forever.”
R.
Give glory and eternal praise to him.“All you waters above the heavens, bless the Lord,
praise and exalt him above all forever.”
R.
Give glory and eternal praise to him.“All you hosts of the Lord, bless the Lord;
praise and exalt him above all forever.”
R.
Give glory and eternal praise to him.
GospelLk 21:5-11
While some people were speaking about
how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings,
Jesus said, “All that you see here–
the days will come when there will not be left
a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.”
Then they asked him,
“Teacher, when will this happen?
And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?”
He answered,
“See that you not be deceived,
for many will come in my name, saying,
‘I am he,’ and ‘The time has come.’
Do not follow them!
When you hear of wars and insurrections,
do not be terrified; for such things must happen first,
but it will not immediately be the end.”
Then he said to them,
“Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
There will be powerful
Daniel Describes the King’s Dream (Continuation)
(Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar,) [31] ”You saw, 0 king, and behold, a
great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood
before you, and its appearance was frightening. [32] The head of this
image was of fine gold, its breast and arms of silver, its belly and
thighs of bronze, [33] its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and
partly of clay. [34] As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human
hand, and it smote the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke
them in pieces; [35] then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver,
and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the
chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away,
so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck
the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.
Daniel Interprets the King’s Dream
[36] ”This was the dream; now we will tell the king its
interpretation. [37] You, 0 king, the king of kings, to whom the God
of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the
glory, [38] and into whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the
sons of men, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air, making
you rule over them all--you are the head of gold. [39] After you shall
arise another kingdom inferior to you, and yet a third kingdom of
bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. [40] And there shall be a
fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and
shatters all things; and like iron which crushes, it shall break and
crush all these. [41] And as you saw the feet. and toes partly of
potter’s clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom; but
some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron
mixed with the miry clay. [42] And as the toes of the feet were partly
iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly
brittle. [43] As you saw the iron mixed with miry clay, so they will
mix with one another in marriage,” but they will not hold together,
just as iron does not mix. with clay. And in the days of those kings
the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be
destroyed, nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people. It
shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and
it shall stand for ever; [45] just as you saw that a stone was cut
from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the
iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has
made known to the king what shall be hereafter. The dream is certain,
and its interpretation sure.”
Commentary:
2:25-35. Daniel claims no personal credit for knowing the content of
the king’s dream; he makes it plain that God revealed the Secret to
him; only God knows what will happen in the “latter times” (vv.
27-28). We have entered the area of divine revelation, which is what
this book is all about-- the world of the End time, which as yet
exists only in the mind of God. Our Lord himself will say that “of
that day and hour no one knows...“ (Mt 24:36).
Daniel uses the opportunity to lead the king to the true God, the God
of heaven, who knows all mysteries.
In line with the thread of the story, Daniel first tells the king
about the content of his dream (2:31-35) and then interprets it
(3:13-22). The king’s vision is full of symbolism In the Bible,
statues connote idolatry, insofar as they are graven images (cf Ex
32), even though the passage does not expressly say that the image is
an idol. As one moves from head to feet, the metals used in the statue
decrease in value. In contrast with the materials of the statue are
the stone and the mountain, symbols of solidity and stability. The
interpretation reads the metals as representative of the various
kingdoms. This is a classical symbolic image: Hesiod, a Greek
historian of the eighth-to-seventh century BC, in his book "Works and
Days", 199—201, had used the very same metals and in the same order to
signify periods of history; something similar is to be found in
Polybius ("Historia", 38, 22) and other classical authors. Now, in
Daniel’s vision, the four metals all appear together, at the same
time, so to speak--a sign that, for God, history is all of a piece.
The image with “feet of clay” (vv. 32-33) is often taken as a reminder
that human nature is frail and that nevertheless it is endowed with
precious gifts from God: “Our Lord and our God: how great you are! It
is you who give our life supernatural meaning and divine vitality. For
love of your Son, you cause us to say with all our being, with our
body and soul: ‘He must reign!’ And this we do against the background
of our weakness, for you know that we are creatures made of clay--and
what creatures! Not just feet of clay, but heart and head too” (St
JosemarIa Escrivá, "Christ Is Passing By", 181).
2:36-45. Daniel is not being sychophantic by addressing the king as he
does in vv. 37-38; he is simply saying that the king has an impressive
empire because he has been given it by God, who rules over all things;
he wants the king to see that the power and glory that he enjoys are
part of God’s plans. The other metals (silver, bronze, iron), as one
can deduce from the rest of the book, stand for the empires of the
Medes, Persians and Greeks, though that interpretation is not
perfectly clear because the silver could stand for the empire of the
Medes and Persians together. The divided kingdom made of clay and iron
is a reference to the Greek empire after the death of Alexander the
Great (cf. 11:4) and to the political marriages made between the
Seleucid and Lagid Greeks (Antiochus II marrying Bernice; Ptolemy V
marrying Cleopatra: cf. 11:6, 17) that failed to bring about unity or
union. This passage would have been composed when the Seleucids and
Lagids were at loggerheads, and it was against the same background
that the prophecy about the end of time seeing the
establishment by God of an everlasting kingdom was made (God’s action
is symbolized by the stone that strikes the image; there is no sign of
any human power at work). It does not say here who will be given the
kingdom, but in the light of 7:26 and the fact that it says that the
kingdom will not be left to another people (v. 44), the implication is
that it will be given to faithful Israelites.
The symbol of the stone has a messianic dimension insofar as it is the
means by which the everlasting kingdom will be established and the
previous kingdoms destroyed. There are echoes here of images in other
prophetical works and in the psalms. Isaiah speaks of God as a “stone
of offense”, a stumbling-block for Israel (cf. Is 8:14) and in Psalm
118:22 the people of God are compared to a stone which the builders
have rejected and which has become the cornerstone. In
the New Testament that stone is Christ, and the kingdom which he
ushers in is the Kingdom of God which will be taken from Israel, to be
given to another people that will produce fruit (cf. Mt 21:42-43);
Christ also says that anyone who falls on that stone will be broken to
pieces (cf. Lk 20: 17-18). Using this Christological interpretation of
the stone, some Fathers interpret the mountain from which the stone
comes as being the Blessed Virgin, and the stone cut off “by no human
hand” as an image of the conception of Jesus in the Virgin’s womb
without the involvement of a man: “When Daniel says that the one who
inherits the eternal kingdom is like a son of man, who can he mean, if
not the Lord himself? For he was born of a woman, like a son of man,
but he showed that his life and power were not of human origin. To say
that he is a stone that moves under no external force is a mysterious
description: it means that Christ is not the fruit of the work and
will of men; he is the fruit of the providence of God, the Father of
the universe” (St Justin, "Dialogus Cam Tryphone", 76, 1).
The interpretation of the dream, the message it contains, would
interest the reader of the book--but not Nebuchadnezzar, who died
centuries earlier. It describes how, after the kingdoms of this world
which succeed one another over the course of history, an everlasting
kingdom will be established by God himself--a kingdom surpassing any
that man could create. A Christian will read this as heralding the
Kingdom of Christ, although that will not be an earthly, political
kingdom, but a spiritual one, as Jesus will tell Pilate at his trial:
“My kingship is not of this world” (Jn 18:36).
Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text
taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries
made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of
Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock,
Co. Dublin, Ireland.
From: Luke 21:5-11
Discourse on the Destruction of Jerusalem and the End of the World
[5] And as some spoke of the temple, how it was adorned with noble
stones and offerings, He (Jesus) said, [6] "As for these things which
you see, the days will come when there shall not be left here one stone
upon another that will not be thrown down." [7] And they asked Him,
"Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign when this is
about to take place?" [8] And He said, "Take heed that you are not
led astray; for many will come in My name, saying, 'I am He!' and,
'The time is at hand!' Do not go after them. [9] And when you hear of
wars and tumults, do not be terrified; for this must first take place,
but the end will not be at once."
[10] Then He said to them, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom
against kingdom; [11] there will be great earthquakes, and in various
places famines and pestilences; and there will be terrors and great
signs from heaven."
Commentary:
5-36. The disciples are in awe of the magnificence of the temple, and
Jesus uses the occasion to give a long discourse, known as the
"eschatological discourse" because it has to do with the last days of
the world. The account given here is very similar to those in the
other Synoptic Gospels (cf. Mt 24:1-51; Mk 13:1-37). The discourse
deals with three inter-connected subjects--the destruction of Jerusalem
(which took place some forty years later), the end of the world, and
the second coming of Christ in glory and majesty. Jesus, who also
predicts here the persecution of the Church will experience, exhorts
His disciples to be patient, to pray and be watchful.
Our Lord speaks here in the style and language of prophecy, using
images taken from the Old Testament; also, in this discourse prophecies
which are going to be fulfilled very soon are mixed in with others
which have to do with the end of the world. It is not our Lord's
intention to satisfy people's curiosity about future events, but to
protect them from being discouraged and scandalized about what is going
to happen in the days immediately ahead. This explains why He exhorts
them: "Take heed that you are not led astray" (v. 8); "do not be
tempted" (v. 9); "watch at all times" (v. 34).
8. On hearing that Jerusalem is going to be destroyed, the disciples
ask what sign will be given as a warning of these events (vv. 5-7).
Jesus answers by telling them "not to be led astray," that is to say,
not to expect any warning; not to be misled by false prophets; to stay
faithful to Him. These false prophets will come along claiming to be
the Messiah ("I am He!"). Our Lord's reply in fact refers to two
events which in the Jewish mind were interrelated--the destruction of
the Holy City and the end of the world. This is why He goes on to
speak of both events and implies that there will be a long gap between
the two; the destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem are a kind of
sign or symbol of the catastrophes which will mark the end of the
world.
9-11. Our Lord does not want His disciples to confuse just any
catastrophe--famine, earthquake, war--or even persecution with the
signals of the end of the world. He exhorts them quite clearly: "Do
not be tempted," because although all these has to happen, "the end
will not be at once;" in spite of the difficulties of all kinds the
Gospel will spread to the ends of the earth. Difficulties should not
paralyze the preaching of the faith.
Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text
taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries
made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of
Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock,
Co. Dublin, Ireland.
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Upon arriving to congratulate the newlyweds, Tiburtius was astounded by the unspeakably beautiful roses and lilies. As soon as he was informed regarding their origin, he too asked for the waters of baptism. "St. Cecilia said to Tiburtius: Today I acknowledge you as a brother-in-law, because the love of God has made you despise the idols. Just as the love of God gave me your brother as a spouse, so it has given you to me as a brother in-law." When Almachius, the prefect, heard of the conversions, he ordered Maximus, his officer, to arrest and imprison all of them. Before being put to death, they instructed Maximus and his family, and baptized them during the night preceding execution. 