Read Matthew 24:1-13
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
When I crossed the 45-year mark of my age, life had become very stable. My children grew up, and we all together enjoyed our life in a comfortable house with a cosy gazebo surrounded by dozens of cherry and apple trees. It seemed that I secured the future of my family for many years to come. Yet everything was changed in a matter of one day when the invaders entered the territory of Ukraine in February 2022. The seeming stability and idyllic harmony vanished in a matter of hours. Since that time, our children had to learn how to live and take care of themselves in a distant Western European country while we as parents had to experience daily sirens, countless funerals, and worries about the future which no longer seemed to be as safe as it was in the past. The relocation across the ocean did not take away all anxieties of living in the new circumstances still being separated from some members of the family who have chosen not to leave their home country.
What a change in life from seeming stability to new beginnings! What a significant shift in spiritual perception of the world and rethinking of one’s relationships with God! What a crucial reassessment of the most fundamental values of life! I certainly learned that I can no longer rely on myself, but I can only rely on God, that material goods cannot provide security, because they are temporary, that there could never be stability in the world corrupted by sin and the only stability comes from our relationship with the Lord, that the true happiness is not about the place, but about people who surround you. Some of the new and unexpected experiences actually have helped me to look at reality with more clarity and openness to the will of God, who closes one door in order to open another door and a new chapter with less stability, but with more trust, with less comfort, but with closer ties, with less predictability, but with new hopes.
This is something similar experienced by the disciples of Jesus when they were looking at the beauty of Jerusalem and majestic splendour of the Temple. They were certainly proud to be members of the people of Israel, who have built for themselves a secure future in the promised land flowing with milk and honey. Maybe for that reason, Jesus wants to shake their perception of temporary stability by prophesying that: “one stone will not be left upon another that will not be thrown down.” There is nothing immovable or unvarying in this world, and one can find no true secureness in the external circumstances of life since it can be found only on the spiritual level of our intimate relationship with the Giver of life. Prophesying about the great destruction of the Temple, the demolition of Jerusalem and the slaughtering of its inhabitants, Jesus does not leave us without hope. The new People of Israel will be called to existence, the new quality of relationship with God will be established. Yet, they will no longer be based on the stability of the law, but on the vulnerability of love.
Celebrating the Saturday after the feast of Exaltation of the Cross, we have to be conscious that our life may not be exempt from suffering, but: “the one who endures to the end will be saved.”