Living on the edge

 An audio version of today’s gospel and blog can be accessed via this link.

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Before we begin, this is just a warning that the blog will shift to Sundays and Wednesdays, starting from 30 November, the first Sunday of Advent in the new liturgical year.  

Today’s gospel (Luke 21: 29-33) crowns the series of Jesus’ complex prophecies about the end times – complex, not because His language is difficult, but because these prophecies refer to different historical events, at least from a human perspective. We like our histories linear and neat, not interwoven and cast under an eternal light. And yet we find Jesus inviting us to another point of view which is ultimately the standpoint of eternity. Here, God lives among men.

There are at least three ends of the world evoked in the gospels during this season: the end of the world at the end of time, anticipating the return of the Son of Man and the last judgement; the end of the Jewish world of the Old Testament with the sacking of Jerusalem and the dispersal of the Jewish people; and lastly – since death is for every individual the end of their own world – the end of every individual’s moment under the sun, the point at which the pilgrim in this world reaches the end of their natural life or perhaps has it taken from them.

What does Jesus mean then that when the disciples see all these signs, they will know that the kingdom of God is near them? Is it just possible that while these signs will have their historic fulfilment, there is another layer of meaning to them? Strangely, few of the signs He has evoked in these passages are distinctive or unique. There have always been wars and famines, there have often been earthquakes and plagues. Jerusalem has frequently been surrounded by armies from empires and neighbouring countries, from the sands of Arabia or from the green fields of Europe, ordered to go there by Roman consuls, Ottoman sultans, French kings, and British imperial governments. How is it then that the kingdom of God can be identified if all the signs for it surround the disciples of Jesus in an undifferentiated cacophony? Where is our liberation when the dreadful signs of the end appear to be signs of the middle and the beginning as well?

But perhaps Jesus seeks here to wrongfoot the disciples’ taste for the spectacular. When will it be, they wonder? When, indeed? The answer is not then but now. Instead of making all these prophesies, Jesus might easily have said: when you see the sun rising, when the bird is on the air, when the sea laps the shore, when nature slumbers at night and wakes by day, then you will know that the kingdom of God is near. It is a divine tease. In other words, don’t await the drama, the crisis of the final cataclysm, although these things will come. Instead, O that today you would listen to His voice, harden not your hearts.

For the boundaries with eternity cross not only some future historical timeline but intersect the heart of every living, breathing human being. Time rises like the crest of a mountain line, giving way on the one side to the country of God and on the other to the lake of fire in St John’s vision in the Book of Revelation. God, who is omnipresent, upholds in being every thinking intelligence in the universe, angelic, human, and demonic. How can it not be that eternity thereby crosses our very thoughts and haunts our desires, even for those who have rejected Him?

But this eternity is not an endless time but an ever-present now, already unfolded and made vital through God’s very life in which we are merely sharers: all sharers in His being, some – those who accept Him – sharers in His friendship and love. Eternity thus is not at the end of our lives but stands in some overarching dome that encompasses us and, if we are open to it, fills our hearts with its promise and its riches.

And this is why, properly considered, there is no such thing as the humdrum. All the boredom and weariness of life is a deception; we have a window on eternity, but we fail to keep it clean. All flight towards the humdrum is in fact a flight from this ever-present eternity; all flight towards the humdrum is in a sense a refusal to bear with the eternal being who wants to be so close to us; we engage instead in false attempts to give meaning to our lives when they are severed from this eternal perspective. The kingdom is near to us when we see these signs, but the real question is: are we near to the kingdom? Are we prepared to look upon it and see it with the joyous eyes of Mary, with a heart full of festivity at His love made tangible, even in the simple tasks of a humble reality unadorned by the finer things?

Of course, we are wounded and need the Lord’s mercy. We are as yet convalescent; surprised and grateful beneficiaries of the kindness of the Divine Samaritan. But if we look to the windows that open constantly on eternity, how we should put to flight the burdens of our sickroom and the weariness of the everyday to rejoice and say ‘yes’ to the Lord in every moment of our lives!