Courage, Lift up Your Head!
Gospel: Luke 21:5-19

Fr. Jijo Kandamkulathy CMF
Claretian Missionaries

The earth is consumable, the Sun is, the solar system is; the universe and multiverses are all consumables. There will be an end to all these, but not when you and I are living.  However, when political upheavals, wars, famine and pestilence push us into a sense of misery and despondence. With the invasion of Ukraine by the Russians or the impending sense of peril with the news of other strained relationships among countries bring us to the same despondence. Rumors spread quickly about the end of the world. Fundamentalist sects refer to some biblical texts validating these despair and impending peril. The most cited is this: “There will be difficult times in the last days. People will become selfish, lovers of money, boastful, conceited, gossips, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy. They will be unable to love and to forgive; they will be slanderers, without self-control, cruel, enemies of good, traitors, shameless, full of pride, more in love with pleasures than with God” (2 Tim 3:1-4). We encounter these uncomfortable situations at every age, so those who want to make predictions about the end of the world do not have difficulty establishing the dates. And this is what the Jehovah’s Witnesses do. They are unknowingly making use of our psychic vulnerability to fear and anxiety to bring in a version of faith that feeds on a cruel and violent God. Let us listen to the Lord a little more carefully to see what he actually intends by using the apocalyptic language.

Luke wrote his Gospel around the year 85 A.D. In the fifty years that passed since the death and resurrection of Jesus, tremendous events occurred. There were wars, political revolutions, catastrophes and the temple of Jerusalem was destroyed. Christians became victims of injustices and persecutions. How to explain these dramatic events?

Someone appeals to the words of the Master: “There will be great earthquakes, famines, and plagues; terrifying signs from heaven will be seen… Here is the explanation—Jesus had foreseen everything. The misfortunes (especially the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem) are signs of the end of the world that is coming and that the Lord is returning on the clouds of heaven. Today’s Gospel tries to answer these false expectations and corrects the wrong interpretation that some gave to the words of the Master.

The teaching takes place when some people approach Jesus who is in the temple and invite him to admire its beauty. The rabbis used to say, whoever has not seen the temple of Jerusalem has not contemplated the most beautiful among the marvels of the world. The answer of Jesus is amazing: “There shall not be left one stone upon another of all that you now admire. Amazed, they ask him: When will this be and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” Jesus cannot specify the date: He does not know it, as he does not know the day and hour of the world’s end (Mt 24:36). He is not a magician, a soothsayer, so he does not answer.

Why does Luke introduce this episode? There were false prophets in his communities who have always presented a serious danger to the Christian communities. Luke records that Jesus is also bothered and warns his disciples against those who foretell that the end of the world is near. He strongly recommends: “Do not follow them”.

What will happen in the time between the Lord’s coming and the end of the world? Jesus answers this by using an apocalyptic language familiar to people of his time. He talks about the uprisings of peoples against peoples, earthquakes, famines, and pestilences, terrifying events and great signs in heaven etc…  Jesus uses it to say to the disciples that the passage between two eras of history is imminent. The new era is inaugurated with a proclamation of joy and hope. Anyone in pain and waiting for the kingdom of God should know that the dawn of a new, wonderful day is about to appear. That is the reason that he urges the disciples not to be afraid: not to be frightened. (v. 9)

After having invited them to consider the time of waiting for his return as a gestation that prepares for the delivery, Jesus announces the difficulties that his disciples will have to confront: prison, slanders, betrayal by the family members and best friends. There were those who doubted, why endure so much suffering and make many sacrifices? It’s all to no avail: the wicked will always continue to prosper, to commit violence, to get the better of the righteous.

Jesus says that it will not happen. God guides people’s lives and directs the plans of the wicked to the good of his children and the establishment of the kingdom. In this world, the value of their sacrifice will not be recognized. They will be forgotten, perhaps cursed, but God—and it is his judgment that matters—will give them the reward in the resurrection of the righteous.

Indebted to Fernando Armellini SCJ for textual analysis

© Claretian Missionaries
Cum Approbatione Ecclesiastica 2022