Today’s readings: Daniel 12, 1-3; Hebrews 10, 11-14.18; Mk 13, 24-32.
The gospel’s talk about times of distress involving the sun, the moon and the stars may sound all negative and doom. But Mark is writing about the dawn of a new world. Literature, the cinema and the media in general today make systematic use of apocalyptic themes, exploiting the fear and anxiety that characterise life.
The end of the time in biblical language is only the proclamation of a new beginning, of hope. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” says Jesus. This is to say that our world, all that we are and we do is provisional. That, in the gospel, is meant to be good news, not bad news. Christianity’s big contribution to humanity resides effectively in the transmission of the gospel of hope.
If as believers we can inject hope in the midst of things, then our faith makes sense. If not, then we’re proving right those who accuse religion of being pie in the sky. Hope is the key. Our faith in the God of history transforms itself in hope. “The faith I love best is hope,” wrote Charles Peguy.
Biblical apocalyptic language was never meant to generate fear but is always bound to a very particular understanding of history. History, from a Christian perspective, has a redemption. That is our hope, it is the seed of hope inherent in our nature which allows us to dream and to believe not simply in a final destiny, but in a fullness, completion.
“Christianity is eschatology, it is hope, outlook and direction towards the future, it is by itself openness and transformation of the present,” wrote Jurgen Moltmann in his Theology of Hope. The cosmic catastrophe is not what ultimately the gospel is proclaiming. The gospel aims at what comes after the catastrophe.
Today, in the climate we breathe, we seem to be particularly sensitive to whatever is apocalyptic. We seem to be on edge all the time, as if something big is going to happen. Everything sparks a false alarm.
Even the seemingly private affair of ex-CIA director David Petraeus may at the end of the day have global impact, if classified and sensitive data has been misplaced.
Besides, there is undoubtedly solid reason today for entire generations to find it difficult to dream of a decent future.
There was a time when fear and uncertainty were generated by a climate of Cold War or by the armaments race. Now the issue is about a catastrophe that touches people more directly in their private lives, always with the possibility of ending up unemployed and with no future or bankrupt because of the mishandling of State and financial politics.
There is poison in the air and that needs to be remedied urgently. What is happening today will impact entire future generations. Christianity, together with all other religions, is here to provide the remedy of hope. Otherwise, those who declared religion as pure alienation would be proved right.
In this climate, the focal problem for religion is no longer secularisation. The problem is rather the possibility of hope, and if that does not come from religion, then we’re simply missing something.
Jesus himself never wrote one single word of the Gospel. That was only written later after it had been lived and verified by entire communities of martyrs. That was what made the Gospel good news. It is only when the words we read in the Gospel become verified in us that it becomes good news for today.
Are we delivering in this sense? Is there a new word we are providing that may throw light on the catastrophe? The surrounding catastrophe can easily take over and emerge stronger than the power of the Gospel.
Faith, if it is not translated into hope, may easily turn to be false. As Jesus suggests, faith becomes false when it fails to read the times, when it fails to connect with what is happening. The band cannot simply play on while the ship is sinking. As believers we are not called to watch things happen, but to create new times.
Life is provisional because it can be interrupted abruptly. That is why the Gospel speaks to us in real time, admonishing us that the context we live in is a time of new awareness.