33rd Sunday Ordinary time B 18-11-12
1st Reading Daniel 12:1-3 Time of the End
2nd Reading Heb 10:11-14,18 efficiency of Christ’s sacrifice!!
Gospel Mk 13:24-32 coming of the Son of man.
Theme: ! Spiritual Pilgrimage !
After a wonderful religious journey in the person of Saint Mark for the last few weeks we have been following Jesus instructing us through his religious discourses.
He has been a unique teacher who used parables, miracles, discourses, stories, natural happenings of the day to tell us how God has been treating us to be saved.
Salvation as a reality, we seek it in various religious activities.
When we go for spiritual renewals we engage in reflecting on our religious experiences, these will assist us to deepen our relationship to each other and thus our relationship to God.
Prophet Daniel in the first reading narrates destruction of the temple, which for the Jews was the focal point of religious wellbeing.
To witness the destruction of the temple meant the downward trend in religiosity of the Jews.
Prophet’s predictions of the temple did surely come true.
History is the witness to this in the year 70 Ad the temple was in fact destroyed.
By a gentile army of Titus the king.
Mark must have been a first hand witness to this event so when he narrates the same event in connection to the life of an early Christian community, the reality becomes meaningful because Jesus taught us that our body is the temple of God and only sin could destroy this temple.
The value of the temple destruction, in fact becomes more relevant, in the modern time when we witness these values being eroded by licentious living and other moral degradation.
We know from the times when the disciples began to announce the values of the kingdom there have been persecutions to the reality of the believing community.
This is narrated in detail in the acts of the apostles, in the life of the early church.
Persecution and destruction is a normal reality in the life of the believer.
Haven’t we lived this and experience this even today?
Does it deepen our faith and strengthen our commitment to the Lord even to lay down our own lives for the faith?
Then as the church reaches the end of cycle B to begin the great event of Jesus as the King of kings, even though the kingship of Jesus is not of this world but of heaven, we give him that honor.
The imagery used by the prophet and the writer of the Gospel to indicate the reality of suffering faithful is also real because even in modern times the suffering is a reality that is visible in our own country and in other places like in China and other countries where there is no religious freedom.
Though our country has a constitution which professes to be secular, when it comes to living this reality it is far from it.
The governments that have come and gone spoke so much about this but none have, even lifted a finger to redress this freedom.
So when we see in the second reading the God sending his only son, he in turn has offered himself forever as the one perfect sacrifice once and only once and it is sufficient proof of his love for the whole of mankind.
So in our religious journey towards our heavenly city in our pilgrimage of love let us live this vision of a place for us where there will be life which is full and ever united with the Lord.
In union with the divine word,
Wishing you all a happy 33rd Sunday.
Yours ever
Fr. Juze Vaz svd
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