Nov. 13, 2022 – Malachi 3:19-20, 2 Thessalonians 3:7-12 and Luke 21:5-19

Our lives in this world will not last forever. The plans we make must always be contingent and conditional and take into account our ultimate destiny.

In today’s passage from Luke’s gospel we find Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem. He is quite close to the end of his public life. Some of the people around him-perhaps they were visitors “from out of town” (or his disciples, as Matthew and Mark suggest)-were surprised by the beauty of the stone and the richness of the pilgrims’ offerings.

In the first reading, Malachi predicts: this Day, warning that the future, known only to God, will bring healing and reward for the righteous full of Faith who arm themselves with words and works (peace, justice, mercy and truth), and punishment for the “proud and all the wicked.”

Today’s Responsorial Psalm (Ps. 98) refers to Jesus in his second coming, “The Lord…comes to rule the earth; He will rule the world with justice and the peoples with equity” (Ps. 98:9). The Psalmist offers us a song of joy and praise for the glory of God who will come at last to rule his world.

In the second reading, Paul warned the Thessalonians about the idleness with which some of them were anticipating the end and encouraged them not to tire of doing good. He suggested that their best preparation for the future was to devote their attention to present duties, to maintain a holy and healthy balance between prayer and service, work and play, and to develop lasting family ties and values.

Today’s Gospel passage warns us that the date of the end of the world is uncertain. Signs and portents will precede the end, and the faithful will be called to witness before kings and rulers. The good news, however, is that those who persevere in faithfulness to the Lord will save their souls and enter God’s eternal kingdom.

The evangelist Luke makes us the hearers and recipients of a teaching of Jesus that has a clear eschatological flavor, that is, concerning the end, but especially the end of everything. Never, in fact, are the end of life and the end of life disjointed in the corpus of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.

The eschatological discourse is not about tomorrow’s time but about our “today,” the time of the Church, where so many certainties seem to be crumbling and where everything that has long sustained the faith – tradition, consensus, popularity, social relevance – seems to be running out. A curtain of pessimism covers our ecclesial and social reality: everything speaks of end, decay, failure and death. Well, Jesus today repeats that this very time of ours is the kairós, the opportune time of witness. The request for a sign finds, therefore, an unexpected response: just as the cross is the sign that announces the dawn of the resurrection, so persecution, rejection, littleness… are the signs that confirm the disciple in his daily following of the Crucified/Resurrected.

How to continue to follow Jesus, then, in the time of waiting? Luke indicates some coordinates: “Set your minds therefore not to prepare your defense first; I will give you word and wisdom, so that all your adversaries will not be able to resist” (vv. 14-15). Jesus invites his disciples to go ahead, to walk along the path laid out by the Word, wasting no time in building up within themselves their own answers. The disciple is not to worry about what and how to say, but to make room for the Word, to keep it, treasure it, allowing himself to be transformed into an extension of the Word made flesh. This focus on the essentials will offer the effective tool, the right word to convey the Gospel message in ever-changing situations.

Luke invites his community, and us with them, to discern and guard what belongs to the essential because from this “glowing center” will spring the right tools, words and actions to be effective in apostolic service as well. But this disposition can only arise in a community that does not possess the Word but considers itself a useless servant (cf. Luke 17:10).

I believe this word from Luke compels a critical reading of many pastoral approaches and life projects. Perhaps we need to stop complaining about the difficulties of our present, the barrenness of our apostolic service, and experience all this as God’s kairós, as an invitation to return to the centrality of the Word. Perhaps it is time to downsize ourselves by finding our place in the humble service of the Word, not stifling it with our words, but allowing it to be effective in the world through our increasingly simplified hearts, increasingly defined as reflections of the heart of God.

All this comes at a price, however: “You will be hated by all because of my name” (v. 17). I think this is one of the most dramatic texts in the gospel, punctuated by increasing tension. It moves from social and political persecution to persecution within one’s own family, touching the innermost levels of the person (v. 16). To say that we will be hated by all seems a bit of an exaggeration–in fact, Acts itself reports that the early community was looked upon with sympathy and respect by many (2:47). But the text emphasizes that we need not worry about what men think; we cannot live enslaved to their approval because proclamation demands a free heart, not subject to blackmail of any kind.

For good workers…

Jesus’ concluding words are a source of hope, for they are a guarantee of victory: “by your perseverance you will save your lives” (v. 19). However great the persecutions, turmoil and disasters that may occur, that is not to say that God’s saving and merciful plan will not be fulfilled.

The disciple in the time of crisis is led to an existing beyond easy irenicisms, evil with many names exists, and beyond nihilism, personal and cosmic destruction does not have the last word, it belongs to the Son of Man, the Sun of righteousness. An existing in witness, that of love that no one excludes, that of hope that can see beyond, and that of trust in his Lord.

Perseverance. Faith grows in perseverance: when the enthusiasm of the first moment meets the fatigue of everyday life, of failure, of apparent or real failure… the temptation to abandon “the plow” and turn back (Lk 9:62) is very strong. It is at this moment that emotion gives way to faith, a vigilant faith that leads to conversion, to the passage from us to him, from our gaze, mentality, feelings, to the gaze, mentality, feelings of the Son (Phil 2:5).

The invitation is therefore to trust and rely on the Lord in whom we believe. In him even darkness will turn into light and rejection into a new possibility. Let us consider, for example, what happened to the early community: precisely because of persecution, apostles and disciples leave Jerusalem and the running of the Word can finally begin.