Today’s Gospel begins shortly after Jesus left the Temple where, as we heard last week, he had condemned the Scribes’ desire for honors and flattery and wealth and had praised the widow’s embrace of poverty and her absolute trust in God’s providence. Those messages are clear to us if we listen. They’re a call to seek first the Kingdom of God, and trust that all you need will be added unto you. Don’t start with your focus on worldly desires and cares, then think you can add on God.
On the heels of that lesson on keeping our eternal priorities straight, it seems like an abrupt shift when Jesus today speaks in apocalyptic terms of the days to come when the sun will be darkened and the stars will fall from the sky. It seems the Gospel message has made a hard pivot from “How to do right” to “The end of the world.” But this is not a departure – it’s an exclamation point.
Last week’s Gospel closed out chapter 12 of Mark, and today’s Gospel picks up at verse 24 of chapter 13. In those intervening 23 verses, Jesus set the stage for what we hear today. As they’re walking out of the Temple, one of his disciples turns around and looks back and exclaims, in so many words, “Wow, rabbi, look how awesome this temple built by men with stones is!” While that is a natural sort of expression of wonderment at an impressive building, there’s the danger it can conclude there, to end with the assertion that man, by his own devices, has done something awesome for – and without — God. That assertion is self-reliance writ large, the very thing Jesus has been warning us of.
As we hear in Acts 7, St. Stephen tells the Sanhedrin before his martyrdom, “Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says: ‘The heavens are my throne, the earth is my footstool. What kind of house can you build for me? says the Lord, or what is to be my resting place? Did not my hand make all these things?’”
Jesus underscores this with his reply to the awestruck disciple: “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be one stone left upon another that will not be thrown down.” And it’s from here that Jesus explains in no uncertain terms that things are going to get very, very bad before they get better.
There will be false prophets looking to lead us astray. There will be wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and famines. The faithful will be handed over to worldly authorities, even by members of their own families. Ultimately, Jerusalem itself will be destroyed. Yet throughout all this tribulation, Jesus urges us to persevere, to continue to spread the Gospel.
All those wars and natural disasters and the divisions in society and even within our families sound quite familiar to our ears today. It may be small comfort, but we can be sure that they sounded familiar to the ears of every generation that preceded us since Jesus spoke of them. None of this is new or unique to our present circumstances.
Which gets us to the point of what Jesus tells us today. Terrible things might – indeed, terrible things will – happen, but they are not the end. The end is the salvation of the elect by the Son of Man, the salvation of those who have kept the faith and endeavored to spread it come what may.
After Jesus has told us of the certainty of what is going to happen up to and after the great tribulation to come, he pointedly makes it clear that there’s no certainty of when it’s going to happen. “But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” It is the same for each of us. Unless we’re in a deep place of denial, we recognize that our own personal end will come, and we will stand before the Son of Man, although we know not the hour or the day. Memento mori – remember that we will all see death.
Hesychios the Priest, a 9th century abbot, wrote: “Whenever possible, we should always remember death, for this displaces all cares and vanities, allowing us to guard our intellect and giving us unceasing prayer, detachment from our body, and hatred of sin. Indeed, it is a source of almost every virtue.”
We might be reluctant to accept the inevitability of our own death and respond with denial, or we might accept it and respond with a fatalistic “Why bother, then?” attitude, but in the final verses of chapter 13 that follow today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us our response is not denial or deflated passivity, but rather active vigilance. “Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come” and “What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’”
In his writings, Abbot Hesychios described four ways we can be watchful. The first type of watchfulness is, as noted, keeping our mortality in mind. Remembering the four last things – death, judgment, heaven and hell – is a sure way to keep focused on doing God’s will.
The second type of watchfulness is to closely scrutinize the thoughts and images that we allow to enter or persist in our minds. Especially these days, we have to be aware that social media and the unrelenting news cycle come with messages that will lead us astray or drag us into anger or despair if we allow ourselves to dwell on them.
The third way to be watchful can be the hardest sometimes, and that is free our hearts from distractions and enter into silence and stillness in prayer. I know that’s an area where I struggle, as all the cares and worries and to-do lists in my mind parade on by to the exclusion of quiet contemplation. We might think that stillness and prayer is more like passive meditation than active watchfulness, but it really does take effort to be still. When we see those distractions creeping in but don’t allow ourselves to be carried off, when we make the conscious effort to turn back and focus on our conversation with God, we’re being actively watchful.
The fourth type of watchfulness is simply the habit of continually and humbly calling on our Lord for help. Jesus tells us “I am with you always, until the end of the age” to reassure us because he knows our weakness, and in his great love wants only to help us. This acknowledgment of our dependence on God and his mercy is no better reinforced than in the Jesus Prayer: “Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
We are created, redeemed, and sustained by God. He wants us to have life to the fullest, and gives us the path to that fullness through the sacramental life of the Church. We have access to the cleansing and healing grace of Confession and the life-giving real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.
As we approach the close of the liturgical year and the start of a new one with Advent, let us think about ways we can be more watchful in our daily lives. In what situations would remembering my own mortality be particularly helpful in keeping me on track? In what areas of my life do I need to keep a closer guard on the thoughts I allow in? What can I do – or what can I give up — to carve out some true quiet to sit in the presence of God? And in all these things, can I make my first step be to simply call on God for his help with genuine humility and with the absolute confidence that he will provide it?
In the acclamation before the Gospel for this Sunday, we heard, “Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to stand before the Son of Man.” May we embrace the grace God gives us to keep those words ever in mind and keep our hearts watchful each day.
Image: Second Temple Model. Dana Murray (CC BY-NC-SA)
Deacon Steve O’Neill was ordained for service to the Archdiocese of Washington in June 2013 and serves at St. Andrew Apostle in suburban Maryland. After four years in the Marine Corps and three years at the University of Maryland (where met Traci, now his wife of 30+ years, and earned a degree in English), he has worked as an analyst with the Federal government. Deacon Steve and Traci have two sons and two daughters and three grandchildren.
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