Persecution and Vigilance

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary on the last day of the Church year alert us to be vigilant in our attention to Advent spirituality in the midst of the persecution by the commercial pressure of the secular seasonal celebration.

Watch and Prepare

In the reading from the Book of Daniel, Daniel’s Visions are interpreted.

* [7:18] “Holy ones” in Hebrew and Aramaic literature are nearly always members of the heavenly court or angels (cf. 4:10, 14, 20; 8:13), though here the term is commonly taken to refer to Israel.

* [7:25] The reference is to the persecution of Antiochus IV and specifically to the disruption of the Temple cult (1 Mc 1:41–64). A time, two times, and half a time: an indefinite, evil period of time. Probably here, three and a half years, which becomes the standard period of tribulation in apocalyptic literature (Rev 11:2; 13:5 [in months]; 11:3 [in days]; and cf. 12:14). As seven is the Jewish “perfect” number, half of it signifies great imperfection. Actually, the Temple was desecrated for three years (1 Mc 4:52–54). The duration of the persecution was a little longer, since it was already under way before the Temple was desecrated. (Daniel, CHAPTER 7, n.d.)

The response is from Daniel 3 of Saturday December 2, 2023

* [3:24–90] These verses are additions to the Aramaic text of Daniel, translated from the Greek form of the book. They were probably first composed in Hebrew or Aramaic, but are no longer extant in the original language. The Roman Catholic Church has always regarded them as part of the canonical Scriptures. (Daniel, CHAPTER 3 | USCCB, n.d.)

The Gospel of Luke is an exhortation to watch and be vigilant.

* [21:5–36] Jesus’ eschatological discourse in Luke is inspired by Mk 13 but Luke has made some significant alterations to the words of Jesus found there. Luke maintains, though in a modified form, the belief in the early expectation of the end of the age (see Lk 21:27, 28, 31, 32, 36), but, by focusing attention throughout the gospel on the importance of the day-to-day following of Jesus and by reinterpreting the meaning of some of the signs of the end from Mk 13 he has come to terms with what seemed to the early Christian community to be a delay of the parousia. Mark, for example, described the desecration of the Jerusalem temple by the Romans (Mk 13:14) as the apocalyptic symbol (see Dn 9:27; 12:11) accompanying the end of the age and the coming of the Son of Man. Luke (Lk 21:20–24), however, removes the apocalyptic setting and separates the historical destruction of Jerusalem from the signs of the coming of the Son of Man by a period that he refers to as “the times of the Gentiles” (Lk 21:24). See also notes on Mt 24:1–36 and Mk 13:1–37. (Luke, CHAPTER 21, n.d.)

Barbara Dilly comments that despite his ongoing anxiety, Daniel rejoices in that good news in his psalm of praise.  In it, he further encourages all servants and the Lord, holy people of humble heart, spirits and souls of the just, to bless the Lord; praise and exalt Him above all forever.  Daniel’s response is instructive.

I am pretty sure that we too are those servants of the Lord, holy people of humble heart, and spirits and souls of the just that Daniel refers to in the Old Testament, and that doesn’t make our lives any easier either.  Whether we are called to prophecy, witness, or teaching, we can be sure that we will experience some anxieties when God puts us to work to send a message about salvation.  Yet we, like Daniel, should also bless the Lord and praise and exalt Him above all forever.  Lucky for us, unlike the prophets in the Old Testament, God chooses not to reveal certain things to us like He did to Daniel.  There is still an element of mystery surrounding it all even though the Scriptures reveal what is necessary for us to know.  But this is where faith comes in, at least for me.  Our response to those who say they can’t believe in a God that they don’t see or talk to everyday or understand is to share the good news of salvation that Jesus brings.  As servants of the Lord, we don’t have to interpret dreams anymore.  We can live our lives wide awake without fear!  We also need to share the good news of Jesus humbly and patiently with those who have a lot of anxieties about the kingdoms of this earth.  Especially so these days, we also need to give glory and eternal praise to the Lord who reveals to us the Kingdom of God is eternally ours in Christ Jesus. (Dilly, 2023)

Don Schwager quotes “Drunkenness weakens both soul and body,” by Origen of Alexandria (185-254 AD).

"'But take heed to yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a snare.' You heard the proclamation of the eternal King. You learned the deplorable end of 'drunkenness' or 'intoxication'. Imagine a skilled and wise physician who would say, 'Beware, no one should drink too much from this or that herb. If he does, he will suddenly be destroyed.' I do not doubt that everyone would keep the prescriptions of the physician's warning concerning his own health. Now the Lord, who is both the physician of souls and bodies, orders them to avoid as a deadly drink the herb 'of drunkenness' and the vice 'of intoxication' and also the care of worldly matters. I do not know if any one can say that he is not wounded, because these things consume him.

"Drunkenness is therefore destructive in all things. It is the only thing that weakens the soul together with the body. According to the apostle, it can happen that when the body 'is weak,' then the spirit is 'much stronger' (2 Corinthians 12:10), and when 'the exterior person is destroyed, the interior person is renewed' (2 Corinthians 4:16). In the illness of drunkenness, the body and the soul are destroyed at the same time. The spirit is corrupted equally with the flesh. All the members are weakened: the feet and the hands. The tongue is loosened. Darkness covers the eyes. Forgetfulness covers the mind so that one does not know himself nor does he perceive he is a person. Drunkenness of the body has that shamefulness." (excerpt from HOMILIES ON LEVITICUS 7.5-6) (Schwager, 2023)

The Word Among Us Meditation on Luke 21:34-36 comments that anxiety about the daily issues we face can make us lose sight of our true purpose and goal in life. We were made to love and serve the Lord, to build his kingdom on earth, and to spend eternity with him in heaven. Unfortunately, our day-to-day concerns have the potential to consume our thoughts and actions to the point that we become “drowsy” about what matters most: our life with God. And that life is what prepares us for Jesus’ return.

Trying to tackle anxieties head-on can be a bit like playing whack-a-mole. Hit one, and another one pops up somewhere else. A better strategy is to turn to the Lord and spend some time praising him. As we do, our minds and hearts become focused on his goodness and care for us. Rather than becoming drowsy, our hearts will swell with love and gratitude. And that will make us more than ready to welcome the Lord when he comes again!

“Jesus, whenever I am filled with anxiety, help me to turn to you in praise and thanksgiving.” (Meditation on Luke 21:34-36, n.d.)

Friar Jude Winkler notes that the latter part of Daniel 7 is very apocalyptic like Revelation which was also written near this time. The text declares that even the Seleucid Empire would be crushed. Friar Jude urges us to do everything we can today and even better tomorrow as we ponder the Day of the Lord.

Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, invites us to center ourselves and all we do each day in the flow of God’s love.

When I studied The Divine Comedy in college, I was fascinated that Dante had some of the souls in the highest heaven spinning around. It seemed silly to me that the great reformer St. Peter Damien just “whirled” into deeper and deeper love.

Then, a few years ago in Istanbul, I attended the prayer of the Sufi whirling dervishes. Again, in this sacred dance, there was a spinning around a calm and fixed center. In fact, a dervish cannot fake a calm center and survive the prayer. One foot has to be firmly, calmly grounded in a Stable Love or they cannot do the dance; one hand raised and one hand grounding….

We’ve got to keep whirling in the midst of all that today’s going to demand of us. We’ll have to do this and that. We’ll have to feel this and that. But we’ve got to keep the stable center by a conscious choice for love. If we practice returning to that Love, it will become truly real and vital. We must allow, notice, and draw upon this divine, inherent spinning of love within us, between the three—and of course, we become the fourth! [2] (Rohr, 2023)

We close out the Church year and prepare for Advent even as we ponder our response to the secular winter seasonal celebration that has so much of our attention as the Spirit invites us to anticipate the representation of the Incarnation.

References

Daniel, CHAPTER 7. (n.d.). USCCB. Retrieved December 2, 2023, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/daniel/7?15 

Daniel, CHAPTER 3 | USCCB. (n.d.). Daily Readings. Retrieved December 2, 2023, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/daniel/3? 

Dilly, B. (2023, December 2). Creighton U. Daily Reflection. Online Ministries. Retrieved December 2, 2023, from https://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/120223.html 

Luke, CHAPTER 21. (n.d.). USCCB. Retrieved December 2, 2023, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/21? 

Meditation on Luke 21:34-36. (n.d.). The Word Among Us: Homepage. Retrieved December 2, 2023, from https://wau.org/meditations/2023/12/02/840494/ 

Rohr, R. (2023, June 16). The Prophetic Path: Motivated by Love: Weekly Summary. CAC Daily Meditations 2023. Retrieved December 2, 2023, from https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-prophetic-path-motivated-by-love-weekly-summary/ 

Schwager, D. (2023, June 16). Lest Your Hearts Be Weighed Down. Daily Scripture net. Retrieved December 2, 2023, from https://www.dailyscripture.net/daily-meditation/?ds_year=2023&date=dec2 

Triumph of the Kingdom

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today, in the final days of the Church year, challenge us to consider what the triumph of God over the darkness and death of worldly abuse of power means to our choices.

Triumph over darkness

The reading from the Book of Daniel describes visions of the Four Beasts and judgement before the Ancient One.

* [7:1–27] This vision continues the motif of the four kingdoms from chap. 2; see note on 2:36–45. To the four succeeding world kingdoms, Babylonian, Median, Persian, and Greek, is opposed the heavenly kingdom of God and the kingdom of God’s people on earth. The beast imagery of this chapter has been used extensively in the Book of Revelation, where it is applied to the Roman empire, the persecutor of the Church.

* [7:2] The great sea: the primordial ocean beneath the earth, according to ancient Near Eastern cosmology (Gn 7:11; 49:25). It was thought to contain various monsters (Is 27:1; Jb 7:12), and in particular mythological monsters symbolizing the chaos which God had vanquished in primordial times (Jb 9:13; 26:12; Is 51:9–10; etc.).

* [7:4] In ancient times the Babylonian empire was commonly represented as a winged lion, in the rampant position (raised up on one side). The two wings that were plucked may represent Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar. On two feet like a human being…a human mind: contrasts with what is said in 4:13, 30.

* [7:5] A bear: represents the Median empire, its three tusks symbolizing its destructive nature; hence, the command: “Arise, devour much flesh.”

* [7:6] A leopard: used to symbolize the swiftness with which Cyrus the Persian established his kingdom. Four heads: corresponding to the four Persian kings of 11:2.

* [7:7–8] Alexander’s empire was different from all the others in that it was Western rather than Eastern in inspiration, and far exceeded the others in power. The ten horns represent the kings of the Seleucid dynasty, the only part of the Hellenistic empire that concerned the author. The little horn is Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 B.C.), who usurped the throne and persecuted the Jews.

* [7:9–10] A vision of the heavenly throne of God (the Ancient of Days), who sits in judgment over the nations. Some of the details of the vision, depicting the divine majesty and omnipotence, are to be found in Ezekiel 1. Others are paralleled in 1 Enoch, a contemporary Jewish apocalypse.

* [7:13–14] One like a son of man: In contrast to the worldly kingdoms opposed to God, which are represented as grotesque beasts, the coming Kingdom of God is represented by a human figure. Scholars disagree as to whether this figure should be taken as a collective symbol for the people of God (cf. 7:27) or identified as a particular individual, e.g., the archangel Michael (cf. 12:1) or the messiah. The phrase “Son of Man” becomes a title for Jesus in the gospels, especially in passages dealing with the Second Coming (Mk 13 and parallels). (Daniel, CHAPTER 7, n.d.)

The response is from Daniel 3 of Friday December 1, 2023.

* [3:24–90] These verses are additions to the Aramaic text of Daniel, translated from the Greek form of the book. They were probably first composed in Hebrew or Aramaic, but are no longer extant in the original language. The Roman Catholic Church has always regarded them as part of the canonical Scriptures.

* [3:25] Azariah: i.e., Abednego; cf. Dn 1:7. (Daniel, CHAPTER 3, n.d.)

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus notes the Lesson of the Fig Tree.

* [21:5–36] Jesus’ eschatological discourse in Luke is inspired by Mk 13 but Luke has made some significant alterations to the words of Jesus found there. Luke maintains, though in a modified form, the belief in the early expectation of the end of the age (see Lk 21:27, 28, 31, 32, 36), but, by focusing attention throughout the gospel on the importance of the day-to-day following of Jesus and by reinterpreting the meaning of some of the signs of the end from Mk 13 he has come to terms with what seemed to the early Christian community to be a delay of the parousia. Mark, for example, described the desecration of the Jerusalem temple by the Romans (Mk 13:14) as the apocalyptic symbol (see Dn 9:27; 12:11) accompanying the end of the age and the coming of the Son of Man. Luke (Lk 21:20–24), however, removes the apocalyptic setting and separates the historical destruction of Jerusalem from the signs of the coming of the Son of Man by a period that he refers to as “the times of the Gentiles” (Lk 21:24). See also notes on Mt 24:1–36 and Mk 13:1–37. (Luke, CHAPTER 21, n.d.)

Barbara Dilly reflects most today on the message of redemption in Luke 21:28.  There are a lot of promises that bring us to this point. God promises us everlasting dominion and the coming of a Savior in the Old Testament, and Jesus promises that His words will not pass away even after Heaven and earth will pass away.

Jesus also promises us we can be confident that our redemption is at hand, enough so that we can stand erect and raise our heads, because we will be delivered of all the forces of sin and evil in this world. I pray today that we will all not only trust Jesus’s promises, but that we will remain confident in them until Jesus returns. It is a good spiritual practice, I think, to stand erect and raise our heads a bit each day amid all the sin and evil in this world. The beasts will not prevail. (Dilly, 2023)

Don Schwager quotes “My words will not pass away,” by an anonymous author from the early Greek fathers.

"'This generation' refers both to those who suffer temptation and to those who cause it. It refers to sinners among men and to the demons who are at work in them. For neither group will cease being in the world until its consummation. For Christ said, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels' (Matthew 25:41). Moreover, it is necessary that the source of temptation be preserved as long as there is faith which needs testing. It is also possible, however, that 'this generation' refers to those mortal Christians who would not pass over into eternal life and be made immortal and impassible 'until' all the events about which Christ was speaking had taken place.

"'Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away' because heaven and earth were created to serve you, but my words were uttered to govern you. Both heaven and earth are subject to vanity, as the apostle said, 'Creation is subject to vanity' (Romans 8:20). Truth, however, is by nature unable to deceive and can never die." (excerpt from INCOMPLETE WORK ON MATTHEW, HOMILY 49, the Greek fathers). (Schwager, n.d.)

The Word Among Us Meditation on Daniel 7:2-14 (Meditation on Daniel 7:2-14, n.d.)comments that Daniel’s vision can bring us great comfort. We see disorder, chaos, and dysfunction all around us. People who do good suffer, while those who seek power, wealth, or fame seem to prosper. We may ask, Where is God? Are we all lost, adrift in a sea of selfishness and injustice? Not at all!

You are not lost to God. He sees through all the confusion; he sees you, his beloved child. And he promises that eventually all the books will be opened and his reign will never end (Daniel 7:10, 14). Jesus, King of kings, cares for you. The One who alone has everlasting dominion loves you with a love stronger than death. Nothing can separate you from that love!

“Jesus, you are Lord! You will reign forever and ever!” (Meditation on Daniel 7:2-14, n.d.)

Friar Jude Winkler notes the various creatures in Daniel 7 that represent empires that have conquered the world. The “Son of Man” in Daniel originally referred to all the Jewish people and it became a reference to a messiah in Jesus' time. Incidents in our lives that remind us of our vulnerability remind us to live every second as precious.

Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, speaks of our universal mandate to live out the gospel in our lives. He notes that people who live their prophetic vocation are those who choose this life of love and transformation.

Without a constant infusion of the Holy Spirit, without a constant desire and trust—Lord, give me your Holy Spirit!—we all close down. We do! It’s the nature of life to circle around the smaller and smaller self, to take fewer and fewer risks, and to never go outside our own comfort zone of people who are just like us. Friends and siblings in Christ, don’t do that! We’re all going to be gone in a few years. We only get one chance to live this life of love. Every day is a lesson in love, learning how not to bind up ourselves and our neighbors, but in fact to free ourselves and others. What Jesus is saying here to Peter and to all of us is that he will back up what we do. We are Jesus’ emissaries. As Teresa of Ávila says, “We are the only hands and feet, the only eyes and ears that Jesus has.” [1] Jesus has handed over the mission and the mystery and the wonder of the realm of God to each of us.

Until we can live every day of our lives motivated by love, rather than by fear or people in authority, this Gospel will not work. It will not change you or me, and it will not change the people around us. Let’s begin anew. (Rohr, 2023)

We seek inspired response by the Spirit to our witness to daily destruction of the lives of people through armed conflict and the continued indifference towards the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth.

References

Daniel, CHAPTER 3. (n.d.). USCCB. Retrieved December 1, 2023, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/daniel/3? 

Daniel, CHAPTER 7. (n.d.). USCCB. Retrieved December 1, 2023, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/daniel/7?2 

Dilly, B. (2023, December 1). Creighton U. Daily Reflection. Online Ministries. Retrieved December 1, 2023, from https://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/120123.html 

Luke, CHAPTER 21. (n.d.). USCCB. Retrieved December 1, 2023, from https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/21?29 

Meditation on Daniel 7:2-14. (n.d.). The Word Among Us: Homepage. Retrieved December 1, 2023, from https://wau.org/meditations/2023/12/01/840168/ 

Rohr, R. (2023, December 1). Knowing Jesus for Ourselves — Center for Action and Contemplation. Center for Action and Contemplation. Retrieved December 1, 2023, from https://cac.org/daily-meditations/knowing-jesus-for-ourselves/ 

Schwager, D. (n.d.). Daily Scripture Readings and Meditations – Daily Scripture Readings and Meditations. Retrieved December 1, 2023, from https://www.dailyscripture.net/daily-meditation/?ds_year=2023&date=dec1