Commentary on the Gospel of
Thu Nov 24th - Lk 21:20-28
Jesus's words in today's gospel did shake and frighten many generations of Christians. Jesus makes use of apocalyptic language in order to say what cannot be said with proper words. People who have lived through desperate situations like wars, tsunamis, earthquakes, bombings, total insecurity, can confirm that the anguish in such situations is not just a literary pattern.
However, we shouldn't take these Gospel words as an actual description of some concrete events, but as a warning in front of the instability of this world: nothing is eternal, nothing is fully accountable. New wars, ideologies, cultural confrontations, emergencies, diseases appear unexpectedly. We should be ready for the "end": the failing of so many things on which we have relied.
In Jesus's time the Jewish people was again coming near to the total ruin of all its structures. Later, the same roman empire, after having made thousands of Christian martyrs, knocked down itself, like all the precedent empires. Our society blindly believed on progress, science, wellness state, socio-political balances. Then comes the moment in which everything is destabilised. What is our reaction? Fear, distrust, back to the past? Using once again the apocalyptic language, Jesus foretells the coming of the Son of Man in a cloud with glory and power, yet not to destroy, but to build up a new humanity, with new values of peace, solidarity, brotherly love which could last forever.
