will come when there shall not be left one stone upon another of all that you now admire;
all will be torn down.” And they asked him, “Master, when will this be, and what will be the
sign that this is about to take place?”
Jesus said, “Take care not to be deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am
he; the Messiah the time is near at hand!’ Do not follow them. When you hear of wars and
troubled times, don’t be frightened; for all these things must happen first, even though the
end is not so soon.”
And Jesus said, “Nations will fight each other and kingdom will oppose kingdom. There
will be great earthquakes, famines and plagues; in many places strange and terrifying
signs from heaven will be seen.
Reflect
I n what do we ground our hope? The first reading shows how shaky it is to trust in kings
and secular power. Their kingdoms come and go, rising and falling over time, one replacing
another. No earthly kingdom can last. the Gospel points out that not even the temple will last
forever. The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed a few decades after Jesus’ Resurrection,
something Luke’s readers would have known. Jesus even tells his followers that they cannot
rely on the reports of the people around them, lest they be deceived.
If we cannot ground our hope in political power, religious structures, or the people around us,
in what can we ground our hope? Only in Christ. For Christ is our hope, a hope that cannot
be destroyed or deceive us. We hope in Christ because in his passion, death, and Resurrection
he destroyed death. He has defeated sin and death to give us reason to hope in eternal life.
Thus, as Pope Benedict taught, “One who has hope lives differently.”
© Copyright Bible Diary 2023