Friday of the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
This week's scripture readings have been apocalyptic - focused on the end of times. The readings are deeply symbolic of what the author thinks will happen in the future, but the symbolism is often unclear. Take, for example, today's first reading (Daniel 7:2-14). Get fifty scripture scholars in a room and you would not have the same interpretation. Indeed, get fifty people from our single parish and I doubt we'd have the same interpretation of all the symbols. Who are the beasts and what do they represent? What does it mean that one of the beasts is told to get up and devour much flesh? And whose flesh is it? Depending on the way one reads, these scriptures can seem personally terrifying (perhaps the beast means to devour us!) or personally comforting (perhaps the beast will devour all that is evil in the world).
I do not think we can or should set aside these symbols and I think that reflecting on the end of time and on our own end in death can be spiritually fruitful. But only if that thinking "bears fruit". If all it does is make us more fearful of the future and unfocused on the God who calls us, then I think we have missed the point. For what is important to notice in texts like this is that they have a point, and that is to emphasize that God is ultimately the one with all the power. Daniel sees all these terrible things, but ultimately he knows that God has an eternal kingdom and invites us to be part of it.
Though we do not live in the kind of highly symbolized world of Daniel, we are more like Daniel than it might seem at first. We DO live in a rapidly changing world over which we have little control. We live in a world that we actually know very little about when it comes down to it. Just as with all the symbols in Daniel, it is easy to come up with a wide variety of ways to "read" the world. Get fifty of us in a room together, and we'd each have a different way of interpreting the stock market, the political events, and so on. Our own world is unclear to us.
In the midst of all the events that happen in our lives, it is easy to try to "read" them to see either what we want to see or what we are afraid to see. So the gospel reading (Luke 21:29-33) reminds us to focus on the right things, just as Daniel's apocalyptic text does, which is Jesus. Jesus' own words take us right to the heart of the gospel and right to the One who is in control: "heaven and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away."
Notice too: Jesus does not bring in all kinds of symbols in this passage. He focuses only on one: the fig tree and its flowers, and it is an easy one to interpret. He even gives us the key to interpretation. Is the tree budding or not? Is the tree on the verge of being fruitful or not? Elsewhere, Jesus has said to us, "By their fruits you shall know them." (Matthew 7:16) Rather than focusing on all our human events and trying to see in those events what we, as mere humans, will not be able to see, Jesus suggests we focus instead on the people, places and times when we are (or have been) faithful witnesses to Jesus. We, too, need to bear fruit. Our thinking and our responses to God need to be fruitful, even in the midst of our own meditations on a fearful world.
Today let us pray to be fruitful disciples of Jesus.
- Jana M. Bennett