We are living the last week of the liturgical year for the Church. This coming Sunday we start a new season with the beginning Advent. The reading during this last week always addresses the end times.
The first reading is taken from Daniel and the Babylonia exile. After the fall of Jerusalem, the Babylonians forcible removed many Israelites to captivity and forced service in Babylonia. The Babylonian captivity lasted about 60 years – that is about 2 or 3 generations. It was a personal, cultural, and religious disaster for the Jewish people of that time. It was like living during the end of the world for them. There were adult Israelites who were born in Babylonia and never lived in Israel. Therefore, many Israelites lost their cultural and religious identity and took on the religious practices of the Babylonians.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus announces difficult times: persecutions, family disintegration, oppression, incarceration, legal trials, and hatred. Again, seemingly the end of the world.
As human beings we tend to worry about the externals – the oppression of the Babylonian captivity or the impending doom described by Jesus. Naturally we have rational reactions that lead us to think about: escaping the captivity or imprisonment, avoiding the disaster, how to get through the bad moment, planning our defense, or looking for a good lawyer. Naturally we also have physical and emotional reactions that lead us to live in constant fear and terror. For a person with little or no faith, life is a constant series of uncontrollable disasters that produce constant worry, fear, and constant preoccupation with what to do. The refrain is: “What am I going to do?”
Daniel was able to live outside that fear, terror, and constant preoccupation by being constant in his faith tradition. This gave him confidence in God’s presence in this life and out of that grew his wisdom to understand and interpret life (the signs of the times). Despite the external difficulties of living during the Babylonian captivity, Daniel had an internal fortitude. In the same way, Jesus challenges his disciples to have a constancy in their trust in God.
What a grace for us to have the Word of God to orientate us and call us to living in the Kingdom of God.
Every day of our lives God writes on the wall of our lives, the signs of the times. We are being weighted, numbered, and assigned to the kingdom of God or separated out.
By your perseverance you will secure your lives.
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