WORD 2day: Tuesday, Last week in Ordinary time
November 26, 2019: Daniel 2: 31-45; Luke 21: 5-11
If you have already noticed, you would find that this week's readings have a bi-dimensional orientation - a preparation towards advent (a new beginning) and at the same time a reflection on the end times. This is a truly Christian disposition: a bi-dimensional approach to life.
A reflection on the end times has to be radically open to the new beginnings, lest it becomes a vain curiosity or a hopeless negativity. This is what is noticed around very often: all the talks about the nearing end of the world and the kaliyuga and the messianic stories of saving the world from destruction, the deterministic submission of one self and one's life to stars and stones and simplistic soothsayers! You can look at everything as a frightening hopeless end!
The end we are speaking of is the new beginning of the God's Reign - something that we are working towards on a daily basis! A focus on the new beginnings, the new earth and new heaven, on the definitive coming of the Reign should have a mature openness towards the end time perspective, lest it remains a simplistic dream of an all-bright future, without any personal commitment to it. With the Reign-perspective even the so-called end here becomes a new beginning!
Dreams, visions, apparitions, messages and extra natural phenomenon have no value in themselves, unless they help a better living here and now, and a preparation for a more holistic future. The Word today reminds us of this need - the need to question ourselves on our life style, our criteria and choices in daily life - whether they are really worthy of the Reign, that we are called to announce to the world as disciples of Christ!
Ask yourself: Is the Reign, a beginning or an end!
A reflection on the end times has to be radically open to the new beginnings, lest it becomes a vain curiosity or a hopeless negativity. This is what is noticed around very often: all the talks about the nearing end of the world and the kaliyuga and the messianic stories of saving the world from destruction, the deterministic submission of one self and one's life to stars and stones and simplistic soothsayers! You can look at everything as a frightening hopeless end!
The end we are speaking of is the new beginning of the God's Reign - something that we are working towards on a daily basis! A focus on the new beginnings, the new earth and new heaven, on the definitive coming of the Reign should have a mature openness towards the end time perspective, lest it remains a simplistic dream of an all-bright future, without any personal commitment to it. With the Reign-perspective even the so-called end here becomes a new beginning!
Dreams, visions, apparitions, messages and extra natural phenomenon have no value in themselves, unless they help a better living here and now, and a preparation for a more holistic future. The Word today reminds us of this need - the need to question ourselves on our life style, our criteria and choices in daily life - whether they are really worthy of the Reign, that we are called to announce to the world as disciples of Christ!
Ask yourself: Is the Reign, a beginning or an end!