Fr Marco Lazzaron
esus, in the temple, addresses all the people: “There will be signs in the sun, in the moon and in the stars, and on earth the anguish of anxious peoples”. Jesus quotes the prophet Joel to describe the arrival of the day of the Lord. It seems like the end of the world! Instead, it’s the beginning of a new world. Every day there is a world that dies, but there is also a world that is born.
Luke’s community was in difficulty: the Roman Empire was going through a profound crisis and seemed to be dissolving. The situation was very similar to what we are experiencing today: an era of profound changes. The language is that in use at the time of Jesus, made up of images to be interpreted correctly, not taken literally. The stars, in the Bible, do not indicate the cosmos, but the pagan divinities. In the world surrounding Israel, the sun was not a star but a deity. The moon was a goddess, the sun, a God, and the stars, the mighty ones of the earth. If you read it carefully, it is a message of hope that does not scare but, on the contrary, reassures: the stars venerated by pagan religions are about to fall. All power structures sooner or later collapse but the small Christian faith is protected by its Lord: it has nothing to fear. The gospel, which is “good news”, reminds us that history goes towards the encounter with the God of life. The world is not falling into nothingness, but into the arms of God.
Life is the opportunity given to us to “look” inside ourselves and see the traces of God. Dear reader, be careful to recognize God’s passage in your history, because He is not yet tired of you. If our eyes and our hearts looked carefully at the world, they would realize how much beauty we are surrounded by. Of course, there will be moments in which we walk discouraged, with a heavy heart, but may we never abandon the certainty that this world contains Him, who is greater than us. Anguish is not a good teacher for understanding history, it is important to lift your head, shake off despair and prepare for the grace that comes. The Christian does not allow himself to be disturbed by events, even the most painful ones, but lives everything in the presence of God.
The vigilance that the Gospel calls for is not living on the defensive as if we were waiting for a tragedy. Vigilance means not missing a single fragment of life because it is precious, unique, unrepeatable. It is a question of having eyes open to the seek God’s footprints, because somewhere God has passed, and somewhere he has stopped.
What if God was also waiting? I like to think that history is filled with two expectations: that of man who awaits the return of the Lord and that of God who awaits the return of man. Athanasius of Alexandria writes: “God became man so that man could become God”.