Today’s readings: Malachi 3, 19-20; 2 Thessalonians 3, 7-12; Luke 21, 5-19.

Taking today’s gospel reading literally would be labelled as fundamentalist in this day and age. Jesus paints a grim picture of signs from heaven, of wars, earthquakes, plagues, fa­mines and of fearful sights. Be­sides, he warns about deceivers and predicts that the temple will be destroyed.

Jesus here is not seeking to manipulate the fear of the masses. In line with the prophetic tradition that preceded him and that had frequently prophesied against the temple, Jesus is mainly pointing fingers to the false sense of ritual which betrays the true meaning and scope of religion. This is a powerful imagery that points to the instability of religion, the truth that religion can very easily settle down on false foundations and securities.

When normally we speak of the shaking of our foundations, our defence mechanisms get alerted. But strangely enough, in today’s gospel reading it is Jesus himself who is affirming that our foundations need to be shaken. In the midst of the ruins predicted, he promises an eloquence and a wisdom that the world cannot resist or contradict.

We need to remind ourselves this Sunday that this is the biblical anteprima of the feast of Christ the King. Christ cannot reign in a world that is so estranged from God or in hearts that do not seek authenticity. Hence what the gospel is pointing to is the inner turmoil that always precedes the irruption of Christ in our lives.

The prophet Malachi in the first reading is delivering a similar warning sign in a context when, having returned from the exile in Babylon and rebuilt the temple, the people and their leaders were becoming more resolute in their complacency. The ritual of their religious routine had lost its freshness and power and led to hard headedness.

Malachi is apparently the last of the Old Testament prophets, followed by 400 years of silence on the part of God. He addresses precisely the false sense of security of the people and promises a day of reckoning, a sort of stocktaking exercise for the people to come to their senses. It is the blindness of the people that the prophet is denouncing, a blindness that even in our times and contexts today hinders us from perceiving signs that are loud and clear and yet which we fail to grasp.

This is a failure to read the present, to grasp our current predicaments, and to have an inkling of our possible futures. This is what the gospel is warning about when it speaks of signs from heaven. The signs are there, but with our eyes wide shut we are incapable of discerning the times to have a deeper understanding of who we are and who we are struggling to be.

In his book Homo Deus. A Brief History of Tomorrow, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari examines the bizarre world Homo Sapiens has created in the last millennia, and the path that took us to our present crossroads. As he writes, according to our creed today “the universe revolves around humankind and humans are the source of all meaning and authority”. How is this creed, he asks, shaping our daily life, our art and our most secret desires?

The situation Malachi the last prophet is addressing evokes this same sense of being lost and confused in our times. In this context, religion either becomes irrelevant or it degenerates in a false security. Malachi’s prophecy was followed by a very long silence, broken only by John the Baptist preparing the way for the Lord.

The warning, both in Malachi and Luke’s gospel, is that even from a religious standpoint we can very easily be arguing on false premises. If that be the case, in the face of turmoil, be it physical, psychological, moral or spiritual, religion is set to crumble down. Believing is in no way to be exchanged for some sort of naive optimism. When religion is merely a crust of belief, it cannot hold ground and it will not provide the solace we crave for, let alone the strength to thrive on.

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