XXVIII Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year B – November 15, 2018
Roman Rite
Dn 12, 1-3; Ps 16; Heb 10: 11-14. 18; Mk 13.24 – 32
Ambrosian Rite
Is 13.4 to 11; Ps 67; Eph 5, 1-11a; Lk 21.5 -28?
First Sunday of Advent
The coming of the Lord
1) A future marked by the certainty of a definitive encounter.
The liturgical year is about to end. Next Sunday we will celebrate the solemnity of Christ the King and the following Sunday will be the First of Advent and the beginning of the new liturgical year.
Today, the Church invites us to pay attention not so much at the end of this liturgical year, but at the end of the world, which for us ends with our earthly life. It is on this last point that the Church invites everyone to give the greatest possible attention because afterward we will be subject to judgment.
The end of the world is not the destruction of everything, but the final encounter with God, the All that meets us by welcoming us in his mercy. We meet with Christ, the Good Face of Destiny, the Son of Man. He is the Lord who forgives, the Bridegroom who loves us, the Lord of the Sabbath: He is the one who puts himself in our hands and gives everything, even his life, to us.
Is the end of the world a thief who steals everything or an encounter with the Bridegroom who gives us everything? This question is answered by the passage of the discourse of Jesus proposed by the Liturgy of today and that has a language that the experts call “apocalyptic”. This adjective comes from the noun “apocalypse”, which literally means revelation. However, in the common speech the term has lost its original meaning of “revelation” and, especially outside a religious context, indicates everything from a great calamity to a succession of disastrous events. This has happened because it is a language rich in strong and often disturbing images that, because tinged with fear, are intended to elicit a listening respectful and attentive.
In fact, in today’s Gospel Jesus says, “The sun and moon will be darkened and the stars will fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken. Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. He (Jesus, the Son of Man) will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the earth to the ends of the sky”(Mk 13: 24-26).
With the apocalyptic (literally revealing) words of verses 24 and 25 of the thirteen chapter of Mark’s Gospel, Christ tells us that the world and the humanity that lives in it are fragile. In those days the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give light anymore, and the stars will fall from the sky. But in verses 26 and 27 Jesus infers that, if there is a dying world, there is also a new world born for him and in him. We are not going to the end or to a nowhere, but we are preparing for the final encounter with Christ, who is the final purpose of life and the fulfillment of the world. Implicitly, we think that we are going to end badly because we are afraid, and do not count our days because after them there is only the end. On the contrary, in this narration, fundamental to the Christian faith, the end of history, the whole history, and the end of our personal story are presented as the encounter with the Lord. The purpose of the whole history is the encounter with Him and creation is on the way to this meeting. The whole human history, our own and that of the Universe, are nothing else than a going forward further and further until the glory of the Son will shine in the world. We are children. What will be at the end is our glory: then shall they see the Son of man coming with great power and glory. The sense of history is the revelation of the Son of Man and, in him, of every person, in the full power of life and in the very glory of God.
The Messiah does not wish only to tell the end of the world, but to reveal the meaning of history. He tells us that the end of the world is not the destruction of everything, but the encounter of all with the Son of Man. He is the Lord who forgives, the Bridegroom who loves us, the Lord of the Sabbath. He is the one who puts himself in our hands and gives us everything, even his life for us. The end of the world is not like the arrival of a thief that robs us, but the encounter with the Bridegroom who gives us everything because on the cross of Jesus the old world is already over – the sun was obscured – and the new one was born.
Like every human being, Christians know that one day the sun will go out, but they also know that God’s light will shine forever. The end of the world is not the destruction of everything, but our meeting with the Son of Man, the Redeemer of humanity and of the world. He is the Lord who forgives. He is the one placed in our hands, and who gives us everything, even his life for us. In short, the end of the world is not a theft who steals everything. It is the encounter with the Bridegroom who gives us everything. It is not that we go nowhere into space. The Book of Revelation, in the last two chapters, presents the meeting just like that of the bride with the groom. The Church is the bride who awaits the arrival of the Bridegroom. We should not be afraid of meeting the Love that comes for us.
2) Not when, but how.
The Church continues to proclaim, especially at the end of the liturgical year, the fact of this meeting of love that has to be lived in expectation. Giving weight to the words of Christ “As though that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father” (Mk 13: 32), the liturgy reminds us that we are faithfully called to be always waiting for him who came centuries ago and that will come at the end of time. He also comes today and every day in our lives. For this reason, a hymn of the Breviary makes us sing “Night, darkness and fog flee: light enters, Christ the Lord is coming. The Sun of justice transfigures and lightens the waiting universe”. Office of Lauds, Wednesday of the second week).
In fact, in this transfiguration of the world, our heart is enlarged so that Heaven will find more space and we can have a keener attention (in the most literal sense of the term attention as of constant tension toward the Lord). He comes always but often the meeting does not take place because we live a life that is superficial on a spiritual level. Earthly things attract us so much so to make the soul unavailable for this wonderful meeting. Only rarely do we find ourselves in the right spiritual condition to perceive this “coming” of God. What should we do? Certainly, the Lord will not change, because He always manifests himself, but our soul should change so to always live in expectation and hope.
The question is not so much on “when” (because God comes to us in every moment) but on “how”. Today I dare to propose how to answer the question “How to await the final coming of the Kingdom?”
There are two possible attitudes, that of fear and that of hope.
If we stop at the drama of certain images of today’s Gospel, it would seem that fear should prevail. But Christ adds: “Learn from the fig tree: When its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that ” summer is near” (Mk 13: 28). If on the one hand there is the description of destruction, on the other hand there is the promise of a tender and new life, symbolized by the image of the fig tree whose new leaves teach that the death of winter is defeated and the life of summer is about to flourish and bear fruit in life.
Fear and hope alternate always in human life, even in the one of the believer, to form an ambiguous and unresolved situation.
Human hope is to wait for something but no human being can have the future.
Jewish hope was to wait for the coming of the Messiah.
Christian hope makes already present the kingdom of God within us. It already implies the presence of God in our hearts and God’s presence in us makes us capable of eternal life. “Through hope, we are already in heaven, even if our hearts are still afraid” (Divo Barsotti).
To defeat this fear, we can go back to the many passages in the Bible where there is an invitation not to be afraid and not to fear. For example, let’s think of Peter walking on waters to meet Jesus. At a certain point, he gave in to the fear of the wind and the waves and started sinking. Then, he found the outstretched hand on him that raised him up, forgave him and gave him new strength
All this encourages us to have hope and not fear, trust and not despair.
One way to experience this important “how”, this hope, is the one of the Consecrated Virgins in the world. These women are committed to live their virginity because in this way they wait for Christ with full hope. In love with Christ, like “wives” who have not seen the bridegroom for a long time, wait for him every day not only with hope but also with anxiety and passion. Every day they pray to see Him return and to meet Him forever. These women live virginity with a complete dedication because virginity keeps the soul awake and tense to Christ. They engage in frequent prayer, made in silence, to keep a watchful heart. Doing so, they show us how our whole person should reach out to the Lord, who comes to us, gives himself to us and revives us.