Thursday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 21:20-28

Jesus continues his warnings of what is to come. It is a blending of what is going to happen to Jerusalem and of the end of all things. The images are mainly biblical and apocalyptic, taken from Old Testament prophecies and not to be seen as an accurate description of what is actually going to happen some 40 years later. The sign that the end was near would be Jerusalem’s being surrounded by armies accompanied by the “desolating sacrilege” (see Matt 24:15). Nevertheless, it is true that Jerusalem was encircled by the armies of Rome. The safest place to be was in the surrounding hills, not in the city, which was reduced to rubble.

Jesus is emphasising not so much the actual events, but rather their cause—the faithlessness and corruption of so many for which destruction was the inescapable outcome. So he calls them the “days of vengeance”, a time of punishment not indicating God’s revenge, but the natural result of evil and corruption, warnings of which the Scripture, especially the prophets, are full. See, for example, Isaiah 63:4; Jeremiah 5:29; Hosea 9:7; and especially, Daniel 9:26-27:

Desolations are decreed. He [King Antiochus] shall make a strong covenant with many [faithless Jews] for one week, and for half of the week [three and a half years] he shall make sacrifice and offering cease, and in their place shall be a desolating sacrilege until the decreed end is poured out upon the desolator.

The Temple was desecrated by Antiochus from 167 to 165 BC. The “desolating sacrilege” perhaps refers to an inscription placed on the portal of the Temple dedicating it to the Olympian Zeus. All of this, of course, was to be repeated. And in many ways, has been repeated again and again—recall, for example, the statue of a nude woman set up as a deity in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris during the French Revolution.

What follows from verse 23 is more relevant to the destruction of Jerusalem:

Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days!

It will be a time of great distress. Many will be cut down and others will be led away into captivity to pagan territories (the Romans liked to parade their prisoners in a victory march in Rome). The holy city itself, its Temple in ruins, will be trampled on by Gentiles—a fate it still experiences.

This will happen:

…until the times of the nations are fulfilled.

For, as Paul indicates in his letter to the Romans (11:25-29), it is the Gentiles who have taken the place of the Jews as the bearers of the Good News and the builders of the Kingdom. But Paul believed that the age of the Gentiles would only end with the return of Israel and the reconciliation of all in Christ Jesus as Lord. It is an indefinite period, and it is still in process. Our God is an all-inclusive God, and a patient God.

Finally, Jesus speaks of various cataclysmic and apocalyptic signs to signal the end of time. They are typical biblical phenomena and not meant to be taken as exact foretelling of events. They conclude with Daniel’s vision:

Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.

It is not intended to fill people with fear and trembling, except perhaps those who have lived wicked lives.

But for the disciples, the loyal followers of Jesus, it is a time to:

…stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.

As we saw in yesterday’s Gospel, sufferings and tribulations are part and parcel of living the Christian life to the full. Our message and our vision is a ‘sign of contradiction’, a beacon of light to many and to others a threat to be radically uprooted.

But for those who have tried to live by the vision and values of the Gospel, for those who have tried to seek and find Jesus in all the people and events of their lives, who have spent hours with him in intimate dialogue, it is the time of their final liberation, a time when there will be no more sorrows, no more tears, no more hardships, no more disappointments. Rather, they will be entering an unbroken time of love and intimacy, of freedom and peace, of joy and consolation. So, as we approach the end of another liturgical year, we do so on an upbeat note.

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Thursday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Daniel 6:12-28

We now find Daniel living under a third king, Darius. He is ‘Darius the Mede’, presented as the successor to Belshazzar, whom we saw murdered at the end of yesterday’s reading. He is actually unknown to history, nor is there any room for him between the last Chaldaean (Babylonian) king and Cyrus the Persian, who had already conquered the Medes before capturing Babylon. The character of this Darius has probably been modelled on that of the Persian King Darius the Great (522-486 BC), the second successor of Cyrus.

Again, Daniel is the central figure. He represents not a historical person, but the Jew who is absolutely loyal to his God and his faith under all circumstances. This serves as an uplifting message to the readers of the book now living under the harsh rule of Antiochus.

Daniel had risen to the very top of the kingdom’s hierarchy. He was the first among three “administrators” (or “presidents” in some translations) to whom over 120 princes or satraps—who ruled the kingdom—were responsible. He was so superior in every way to the other administrators and satraps that the king seriously thought of making him ruler of the whole kingdom. Not surprisingly, this occasioned jealousy among his fellow administrators and the satraps. They wanted to find some affair of state by which they could discredit Daniel, but they could find absolutely nothing with which to fault him.

They then realised that the only way to get him was to focus on Daniel’s Jewish faith, saying:

We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God. (Dan 6:4)

They went in a body to the king and, after the usual sycophantic expressions of flattery, asked him to issue an edict. The edict was to say:

…that whoever prays to any god or human, for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be thrown into the den of lions.(Dan 6:7)

They then asked the king to sign the document at once so that it could not be changed and would come into effect immediately. The king, no doubt flattered by the language of the edict, signed it.

When Daniel heard about the edict, he retired to his house, where the windows of his upstairs room faced Jerusalem. Three times each day, according to his usual custom, he went down on his knees to pray and give praise to God. The custom of praying with the face towards Jerusalem seems to date at least from the Exile. Later, Christians had their churches facing east, towards the rising sun, a symbol for the Risen Jesus, while Muslims pray facing Mecca.

All of this is by way of introduction to today’s reading which picks up the story at this point.

The men who had got the king to sign the edict went to Daniel’s house and—probably as they expected—found Daniel praying to his God. They then went to the king and reminded him of the edict he had signed and the penalties for its non-observance. Replied the king:

The thing stands fast, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be revoked.

The men then reported that they had found Daniel praying to his own God three times a day—a clear violation of the edict.

The king, who was clearly fond of Daniel and valued his services to the kingdom, was distressed at this information and wanted to do something to save Daniel. But the enemies of Daniel kept reminding the king that laws he passed could not be changed for anyone.

The king then reluctantly ordered that Daniel be thrown into the pit of lions. His parting words were:

May your God, whom you faithfully serve, deliver you!

The pit was then closed with a large stone and sealed with the king’s own signet ring and those of his nobles. Daniel’s fate, it seemed, was literally sealed. (Perhaps this is the origin of the term?)

The king, however, remained deeply disturbed at his decision. He spent the night in fasting and refused to receive any of his concubines. He spent a sleepless night worrying over Daniel and, at the first light of dawn, rushed to the pit. As he reached it he called out:

O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God whom you faithfully serve been able to deliver you from the lions?

To his amazement, the king hears Daniel speak back to him from the pit:

O king, live forever! My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths so that they would not hurt me, because I was found blameless before him; also before you, O king, I have done no wrong.

The king was overjoyed and ordered that Daniel be immediately released from the pit. He was unhurt because he had trusted in his God. The king then ordered that Daniel’s accusers be thrown into the pit together with their wives and children, in accordance with Persian custom.

We remember in Jesus’ parable about the unforgiving servant, where the king ordered a servant:

…to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions and payment to be made. (Matt 18:25)

Now, the new prisoners had hardly reached the floor of the pit when they were immediately devoured by the hungry lions.

The king then sent a proclamation not just to his own kingdom, but:

…to all peoples and nations of every language throughout the whole world…

The proclamation said:

May you have abundant prosperity! I make a decree, that in all my royal dominion people shall tremble and fear before the God of Daniel…

In effect, he ordered a national conversion. The God of Daniel was to be reverenced and feared. It was an order in the form of a triumphal hymn about the God of Daniel:

For he is the living God,
enduring forever.
His kingdom shall never be destroyed,
and his dominion has no end.
He delivers and rescues;
he works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth;
he has saved Daniel
from the power of the lions.

Once again, the story is to be read in the context of the Jews suffering under the persecution of the tyrant Antiochus. If God will deliver Daniel from those who hate his religion and from the ferocity of the lions, he will do the same for his faithful people now. God’s Kingdom will not be destroyed; God’s dominion is without end—unlike that of secular rulers.

As the story of Daniel clearly illustrates, God is a deliverer and a saviour for all those who put their trust in him. His Kingdom is one that will never end.

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