Tuesday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
The iron, tile, bronze, silver, and gold all crumbled at once, fine as the chaff on the threshing floor in summer, and the wind blew them away without leaving a trace. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth…In the lifetime of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed or delivered up to another people; rather, it shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and put an end to them, and it shall stand forever. (Daniel 2:35, 44)
While some people were speaking about how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings, he said, “All that you see here--the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.” Luke 21:5-6
PietyBe a gardener!
Dig a ditch,
toil and sweat,
and turn the earth upside down
and seek the deepness
and water the plants in time.
Continue this labor
and make sweet floods to run
and noble abundant fruits to spring.
Take this food and drink
and carry it to God
as your true worship.
Julian of
The night became very dark. The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside! What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows! Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.
(From Thomas Merton. "Rain and the Rhinoceros" in Raids on the Unspeakable.
http://www.usccb.org/nab/112707.shtml
Jesus’ message about the fleeting impact of what humanity has made has echoes the prophet Isaiah:
The earth is utterly laid waste, utterly stripped, for the LORD has decreed this thing. The earth mourns and fades, the world languishes and fades; both heaven and earth languish. The earth is polluted because of its inhabitants, who have transgressed laws, violated statutes, broken the ancient covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants pay for their guilt; Therefore they who dwell on earth turn pale, and few men are left. Isaiah 24:3-6
Now, it is also being reinforced by scientific speculation in recent years. Consider the book by Alan Weisman, The World Without Us in which he predicts that the most lasting impact we would leave behind would be plastic, radio waves and reruns of I Love Lucy. According to a repot on the book by NPR, “Nature, always finds a way to survive no matter what obstacles humans put in its path.”
Another scientific viewpoint is expressed in this October 2006 essay by Lewis Smith:
IF man were to vanish from the face of the Earth today, his footprint on the planet would linger for the mere blink of an eye in geological terms.
Within hours, nature would begin to eradicate it. In 50,000 years, all that would remain would be some archaeological traces. Only radioactive materials and a few man-made chemical contaminants would last longer - an invisible legacy.
Smith concludes, “If, 50,000 years hence, an alien archaeologist were to land on an Earth without man, it might find quite frustrating the paucity of evidence that we were here at all.”
What will endure is the Garden of Eden – God’s creation. Plants and animals would quickly reclaim their place on the globe and environmental problems would slowly disappear – except for nuclear waste.
As peace negotiators assemble today in Annapolis, Maryland to try to bring about the next chapter of resolution between peoples who have been warring for more than 5,000 years, the readings help us to focus on the transience of earthly kingdoms like those around the table in Annapolis and the permanence of God’s creations which will last longer than any of these principalities.
Many of the earliest Christians expected the end of time to happen while they still walked the Earth 2007 years ago. Today, Jesus advises us that it (the parousia) is not coming yet. We have to endure man-made and natural disasters that put entire nations in peril as well as persecutions which will affect us as individuals. Right there in Luke chapter 21 is Hurricane Katrina, the South Asian tsunami, the Arab-Israeli wars, Iraq, Afghanistan, Viet Nam, not to mention the Revolutionary Way, the Civil War and WWI, II and whatever is next.
So much for the lasting value of things made by humanity. Let Thy Kingdom Come.
ActionSo what are we to do in the meantime? Throughout this year, Luke has been teaching us the importance of following Jesus day-to-day. Blessed are the peacemakers. What we have heard throughout this liturgical cycle from Jesus through St. Luke has been a constant mantra.
“Listen.”
“Obey.”
“Act.”
A) Bring peace to your part of the world: your workplace, your family, your neighborhood, and your parish.
B) While none of us can get rid of nuclear waste, properly dispose of those things which we do use – from fast food wrappers to newspapers.
C) Use the increasingly expensive energy more efficiently through intelligent use of our cars, our heating and cooling systems and even our light bulbs.
D) Share what you have with those who don’t have it.
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