Today’s readings: Daniel 12, 1-3; Hebrews 10, 11-14.18; Mark 13, 24-32.
Hope is the virtue that dominates today’s Scripture readings which practically bring us to the end of the yearly liturgical journey. If we take today’s gospel text, it seems to remind us how easy it has become, in a quite noisy culture, to keep hearing the roaring sounds that deafen our ears and lose sight of a tree blossoming in silence.
The sign of the fig tree blossoming seems to be nothing compared to the cosmic upheavals that surround us and that shake the foundations in all aspects of our life. Yet this is what keeping faith in our times may boil down to: to recover the capacity to discern the significance of the little things that really matter in life and that can provide us with the right perspective in spite of all that is shattering.
Suffering always breeds uncertainty as to how things are going to turn out. Hope, writes Timothy Radcliffe, is not the certainty that things will turn out well, but the assurance that things will be fine irrespective of how they turn out. In both politics and religion, the substance of what is communicated always promises a better future. But just as religion can be alienating when it transmits a faith that has no hope, politics can be frustrating when it is myopic.
To render this hope accessible, the Scriptures today explain it almost childishly in terms of reward and punishment. In both readings from Daniel and Mark, there is bad and good news. First, there is always the bad news, the experience of distress and darkness that shake us up. With that we can identify very easily.
Then there is the bright side of things, which unfortunately is not there for all to see. At times, even for those of us who believe, the problem is to see when there is nothing to see and to keep strong in believing when havoc is taking over and we cannot figure out what the outcome might be.
In his gospel, Mark, writing at a time when widespread oppression and persecution of the Christian community was already under way, makes use of strong cosmic imagery to depict the inner experiences of distress that shatter our interior lives. It is the chaos that brings darkness and confusion when what we mostly desire is inner peace and serenity. Beyond the chaos there has to be order. Beyond the suffering there has to be redemption.
The problem for the Christian community today is how to sensibly proclaim this part of the good news to generations that are becoming numb to suffering and that envisage hope and redemption as either earthly or no-go at all. At a time when everything, love itself or anything beautiful we cherish, can be simply carried away by the different possible tsunamis of life, the promise of Jesus that “my words will not pass away” is difficult to uphold.
In Mark, Jesus repeats the apocalyptic language we find in the book of Daniel. But then he immediately proposes the fig tree parable as a metaphor of all that blossoms in life and that ultimately can make all the difference. The sign of the fig tree in this context is highly significant because while everything is falling, in the cosmic upheavals just depicted, the fig tree is blossoming, with its leaves coming out rather than falling.
It is this ability to see signs of hope in the land of distress that mostly makes Christian believers stand out in this day and age. It is the fact that, in spite of everything, there are still signs of hope waiting to be discerned that give flavour to our existence. This is what Jesus, through the parable of the fig tree, brings to our attention on this Sunday. In the midst of life as it unfolds, many times these signs escape our attention.
In a sermon, John Henry Newman said: “He is still here; He still whispers to us, He still makes signs to us. But His voice is too low, and the world’s din is so loud, and His signs are so covert, and the world is so restless, that it is difficult to determine when He addresses us, and what He says.”