Gospel commentary for Sunday, November 17, 2024.

Between fear and hope

We are almost at the end of the liturgical year. When Mark wrote this page of his Gospel, the Roman empire was ravaged by wars, plagues, calamities, and famines. The Christian communities were affected by the persecution and killings. Faced with such struggles, Some fanatics began to spread rumours of an imminent catastrophe, the end of all creation, and the return of Christ on the clouds of heaven.

It is here, the evangelist feels he must intervene to put the events in the proper perspective. Jesus is not making some new predictions in the Gospel. Of course, he uses an apocalyptic language. But do not mistake them as invented by Jesus. It is taken from the book of Prophet Isaiah. In chapters 13 and 34, Isaiah says that the stars of heaven and the constellation Orion will no longer give their light; the sun shall be darkened at its rising, and the moon shall not give its light; all the hosts of heaven shall be dissolved.

Many run into the mistake of interpreting the words of Jesus in the literal sense, and thus, we have numerous blockbuster movies talking about the doom’s day or the end of the world. But,
Jesus is inviting his listeners to understand history in a different way. He speaks of the days of the beginning of sorrows. What sorrows is he talking about? They are the pains of birth, the birth of a new world, not the pains of suffering and death. During the Last Supper, Jesus used this image of the woman in childbirth. Although she is in pain, she forgets all her pains when she has the joy of having her child. The pains that we would undergo in this world are the pains of our birth into the new world.

With the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem, a whole new world will begin. With the beginning of the preaching of the Gospel, the gods that had seduced humankind will begin to fall. Emperors and kings who justified slavery, moral corruption, and oppression of the peoples – they considered themselves to be the Sun, the Moon and the stars. But now, they will lose their splendour. All the rulers, from the Pharaoh to the Mesopotamian emperor kings, thought they were stars in the sky. Jesus says all these stars now fall; these stars must not be in heaven; they are not divinities. Where the light of the Gospel enters, all else will be darkened.

Jesus is giving an announcement of joy; it is the announcement of an earthquake that will overthrow all the kingdoms of injustice and lies.

What are the false stars of the world that seduce and cheat people with their false promises of success today? Do you regard money, possessions and the accumulation of power achieved by trampling on everyone else as the stars that you revere and honour? Then, the fall is inevitable.