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Contemplating today's Gospel

Today's Gospel + homily (in 300 words)

Tuesday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
View 1st Reading and Psalm
1st Reading (Dan 2:31-45): Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar: «In your vision, o king, you saw a statue, very large and exceedingly bright, terrifying in appearance as it stood before you. The head of the statue was pure gold, its chest and arms were silver, its belly and thighs bronze, the legs iron, its feet partly iron and partly tile. While you looked at the statue, a stone which was hewn from a mountain without a hand being put to it, struck its iron and tile feet, breaking them in pieces. The iron, tile, bronze, silver, and gold all crumbled at once, fine as the chaff on the threshing floor in summer, and the wind blew them away without leaving a trace. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

»This was the dream; the interpretation we shall also give in the king's presence. You, o king, are the king of kings; to you the God of heaven has given dominion and strength, power and glory; men, wild beasts, and birds of the air, wherever they may dwell, he has handed over to you, making you ruler over them all; you are the head of gold. Another kingdom shall take your place, inferior to yours, then a third kingdom, of bronze, which shall rule over the whole earth. There shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron; it shall break in pieces and subdue all these others, just as iron breaks in pieces and crushes everything else. The feet and toes you saw, partly of potter's tile and partly of iron, mean that it shall be a divided kingdom, but yet have some of the hardness of iron. As you saw the iron mixed with clay tile, and the toes partly iron and partly tile, the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile.

»The iron mixed with clay tile means that they shall seal their alliances by intermarriage, but they shall not stay united, any more than iron mixes with clay. In the lifetime of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed or delivered up to another people; rather, it shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and put an end to them, and it shall stand forever. That is the meaning of the stone you saw hewn from the mountain without a hand being put to it, which broke in pieces the tile, iron, bronze, silver, and gold. The great God has revealed to the king what shall be in the future; this is exactly what you dreamed, and its meaning is sure».
Responsorial Psalm: Dan 3
R/. Give glory and eternal praise to him.
Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord, praise and exalt him above all forever.

Angels of the Lord, bless the Lord, praise and exalt him above all forever.

You heavens, bless the Lord, praise and exalt him above all forever.

All you waters above the heavens, bless the Lord, praise and exalt him above all forever.

All you hosts of the Lord, bless the Lord; praise and exalt him above all forever.
Versicle before the Gospel (Rev 2:10): Alleluia. Remain faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. Alleluia.
Gospel text (Lk 21:5-11): While some people were speaking about how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings, Jesus said, “All that you see here– the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.”

Then they asked him, “Teacher, when will this happen? And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?” He answered, “See that you not be deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and ‘The time has come.’ Do not follow them! When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for such things must happen first, but it will not immediately be the end.” Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place; and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.”

“There will not be left a stone upon another stone”

Fr. Antoni ORIOL i Tataret (Vic, Barcelona, Spain)

Today, we listen astounded to the Lord's severe warning: “The days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.” (Lk 21:6). Jesus' words can be placed in the antipodes of the so called “indefinite human progress culture” or, if preferred, of the unstoppable evolution of some techno/scientific and political/military leaders of the human species.

Where from? Where to? This, nobody knows and nobody can tell, other than, in the last instance, a supposed eternal matter that denies God while, at the same time, usurping His attributes. Amazing, how they try to make us swallow it hook, line and sinker, who, on their side, refuse to accept the temporality and precarious status typical of our human condition!

As disciples of the Son of God-Made-Man, Jesus, we hear His very words and, while making them ours, we ponder over them. He is saying: “See that you not be deceived” (Lk 21:8). This is asserted by He, Who came to bear witness of the truth, while affirming that those belonging to the truth listen to His voice.

And He adds: “It will not immediately be the end” (Lk 21:9). Which means, on the one hand, that we still have time for salvation and we must take advantage of that; and, on the other, that the end will come, anyway. Yes, Jesus, will come “to judge the living and the dead”, as we profess in the Creed.

Dear readers of Contemplating Today's Gospel, dear brothers and friends: a few verses further down this fragment I'm commenting on now, Jesus encourages us and consoles us with these words that I repeat in His name: “By your perseverance you will secure your lives” (Lk 21:19).

By trying to be a warm and cordial echo of these words, and with the energy of a Christian hymn, we shall exhort one another: “Let us persevere, as we are already attaining the summit with our hands!”

Thoughts on Today's Gospel

  • “To prevent his disciples from questioning him about the time of his coming Christ said, 'It is not for you to know the times or moments'. He hid the time from us so that we would be on the watch.” (Saint Ephrem)

  • “The end of the sacrifice, the destruction of the Temple, must have come as a tremendous shock. God, who had set down his name in the Temple, and thus in a mysterious way dwelt within it, had now lost his dwelling place on earth. The Old Testament had to be read anew.” (Benedict XVI)

  • “Jesus (…) identified himself with the Temple by presenting himself as God's definitive dwelling-place among men. Therefore his being put to bodily death presaged the destruction of the Temple, which would manifest the dawning of a new age in the history of salvation: ‘The hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father’ (Jn 4:21).” (Catechism Of The Catholic Church, Nº 586)