This is the last week of our liturgical year in the Church. This week the readings all speak of the end times. We are fascinated with the end times, the end of the world, the final judgement, the Parousia. We want to know the secrets of the time and events that signal the end. Even the folks who were around Jesus in the great temple of Jerusalem wanted to know all the clues. Yet overall, Jesus is not a prophet of doom and judgement. He is a prophet of peace, forgiveness and love. The Gospel is a proclamation and map of God’s unexpected love. The prophets of doom, punishment, and gloom have missed the whole point of the Gospel.
The glory of God left the Jerusalem temple in the times of the prophet Ezekiel as a consequence of Israel’s infidelities. In today’s Gospel, Jesus who is the real, true presence of God’s glory returns to the temple. He is proclaiming that the external, legal, rigid worship that was at the center of the ritual in the magnificent temple building in Jerusalem would be replaced by a new internal, personal worship in his sacrifice on the Cross and in the Church, his body, the new temple. Yet rather than listening to his words, understanding them, and living them, the folks get caught up in fear, terror, dates, times, and place of this change. All of those fears and confusions make them blind. The end times that the people in the temple that day feared so much had already happened – God’s glory had left the temple centuries before. Yet they were blind to the event. Their deepest hope and longing had already been fulfilled – the presence of the savior in their midst. Yet they were blind to that event.
Jesus does not really answer their questions and concerns about times and places. Rather he calls them to a constancy of faith and hope in God’s presence and action in their lives right through the end times. He says quite clearly: Do not follow the fear mongers, the prophets of doom and gloom and judgement; do not be terrified by events. The rock foundation of life for a true Christian living out the basic message of the Gospel. We stand firm on the rock of God’s underserved and unexpected love, forgiveness, and peace.
Do not follow them!
Do not be terrified; for such things must happen first.
Image: https://fatimacmf.org/en/serving-the-world-lk-21-5-11/