33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Reflection: God is there when things look devastating
By SISTER MARY McGLONE
For Luke’s community, it was the Jerusalem Temple. Perhaps for us it’s the twin towers or COVID-19.
Jesus warned people who were enthralled with the Temple’s majesty: “The days are coming when there will not be left a stone upon another stone.” Many who heard him discovered sadly that he predicted not a far-off calamity, but a tragedy they would see with their own eyes and mourn in utter confusion.
The Temple had been the centerpiece of Jewish practice and the place where God dwelt among them. According to ancient sources, the Temple of Jesus’ time was under construction for nearly 50 years and was completed only six years before the Romans destroyed it.
What was Jesus telling his followers when he predicted the Temple’s destruction? While he avoided responding to questions of when it would happen, he warned them of other dimensions of what it would mean. Charlatans would appear, posing as God’s envoys. Natural and social catastrophes would make it seem that the world was coming to an end, and God’s own people would be persecuted by enemies, former friends and even family members. The answer to their anxieties? Only this: “By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”
Our selection from the prophet Malachi helps us make sense of it. Malachi’s description of the day of the Lord is wonderfully paradoxical. He says it will blaze with contradictory effects. Evildoers will be reduced to stubble and at the same time, that sun which destroyed the proud will heal those who stand before God in reverence and awe. In Jesus’ example, cataclysmic events will traumatize some and lead others to act as false messiahs, yet those events will also provide the occasion for the faithful to come into their truest selves.
The faithful who gazed on the rubble of the Temple had to search painfully for what it meant. The ruins testified that their faith in the Temple had been misplaced. Some wondered if even their faith in God had been an illusion: a comforting fiction as long as it lasted, but ultimately little more than what Karl Marx called the opiate of the masses. Had Roman power finally overcome Israel’s God? Others questioned whether their faith depended on the Temple. They remembered that before the Temple, God had traveled with their ancestors, present through the tent of meeting that traveled with the people. Some of these followed the lead of Pharisees and rabbis as synagogue worship created the practices which have continued for millennia.
Jewish Christians, as devastated as the rest, could hardly avoid recognizing the similarity between the ruined Temple and the death of Jesus. Underlining that, Matthew, Mark and Luke recounted Jesus’ interpretation of the tragedy as an event that led disciples to give witness. Later, John made the connection explicit: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19).
Ironically, when Jesus warned the disciples about coming persecution and destruction, he warned them not to try to prepare for it. Attempts to prepare would have only led them to fight imaginary battles. Instead, Jesus promised that when the time came, “I myself shall give you a wisdom that your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.” He offered a persevering hope rather than strategy.
Contemplating first-century Christians and Jews at the destruction of the Temple dares us to ask what anchors our faith. The Second Vatican Council challenged Catholics to a renewal that led us to distinguish between what sacramental theology calls outward signs and inward grace, between symbol and what the symbol points toward, between particular expressions and the essence of faith.
Today, instead of the destroyed Temple, we live with the memory of how Sept. 11, 2001, obliterated our sense of national invincibility. COVID-19 has taught us that national borders are fictions, divisions no more protective than were the emperor’s new clothes. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine keeps us mindful of the constant threat of nuclear war. These realities are universal expressions of the intensely personal truth we all know but usually try to forget: to be alive implies that we are mortal.
As Malachi said, this reality can be either terrifying or hopeful. Going for the latter, we can remember the tent of meeting and persevere in trust that, while we don’t and can’t know the details, we know that the destination is what Pope Francis describes as “the sabbath of eternity, the new Jerusalem” where “we will find ourselves face to face with the infinite beauty of God, and be able to read with admiration and happiness the mystery of the universe” (Laudato Si’, 100 and 243). Trusting in that, we will live like people who know that no catastrophe is beyond the reach of God’s healing sun of justice.
Reading 1
(Malachi 3: 19-20a)
Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven,
when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble,
and the day that is coming will set them on fire,
leaving them neither root nor branch,
says the LORD of hosts.
But for you who fear my name, there will arise
the sun of justice with its healing rays.
Responsorial psalm
(Psalm 98: 5-9)
R. The Lord comes to rule the earth with justice.
Sing praise to the LORD with the harp,
with the harp and melodious song.
With trumpets and the sound of the horn
sing joyfully before the King, the LORD.
R. The Lord comes to rule the earth with justice.
Let the sea and what fills it resound,
the world and those who dwell in it;
let the rivers clap their hands,
the mountains shout with them for joy.
R. The Lord comes to rule the earth with justice.
Before the LORD, for he comes,
for he comes to rule the earth,
he will rule the world with justice
and the peoples with equity.
R. The Lord comes to rule the earth with justice.
Reading 2
(2 Thessalonians 3: 7-12)
Brothers and sisters:
You know how one must imitate us.
For we did not act in a disorderly way among you,
nor did we eat food received free from anyone.
On the contrary, in toil and drudgery, night and day
we worked, so as not to burden any of you.
Not that we do not have the right.
Rather, we wanted to present ourselves as a model for you,
so that you might imitate us.
In fact, when we were with you,
we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work,
neither should that one eat.
We hear that some are conducting themselves among you in a
disorderly way, by not keeping busy but minding the business of others.
Such people we instruct and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to work quietly
and to eat their own food.
Gospel
(Luke 21: 5-19)
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 earthquakes, famines, and plagues
from place to place;
and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.
“Before all this happens, however,
they will seize and persecute you,
they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons,
and they will have you led before kings and governors
because of my name.
It will lead to your giving testimony.
Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand,
for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking
that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.
You will even be handed over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends,
and they will put some of you to death.
You will be hated by all because of my name,
but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.
By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”