WEDNESDAY, THIRTY FOURTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME
Rv 15: 1-4 Ps 98: 1-3, 7-9 Lk 21: 12-19
PERSEVERANCE WINS US OUR LIFE
During this last week of the liturgical year, the readings highlight to us the uncomfortable truth that life on earth is a struggle. You can see that every organism instinctively struggles to enhance life and distance itself from death. All the same, till the day death overtakes them.
Christian faith qualifies the understanding of this struggle, without denying it. In the book of Revelation, the drama of life is depicted by the cosmic battle at the end of times where those who believing in and follow Jesus Christ will definitively be the victors, as they will have arrived at the stature of spiritual and moral high ground.
That amazing experience will naturally make everyone who took the narrow path, burst out in the victory song that reechoes the song of Moses crossing the Dead Sea freed from the grasp of slavery in Egypt, and being present to God who alone is true. They will see and rejoice that the enticements of the world were empty and short lived, really not worthy investing in.
Jesus in the Gospel is already forewarning his disciples that his teachings are bitter and naturally hateful to those who want to go the way of comfort and pleasures as goals of life. Obviously, the heralds of this ‘bitter news’ will provoke systematic hatred towards them. They are assured that the courage and serenity they will manifest in such challenges will be the clear proof of the veracity of what they are proclaiming.
By their courageous perseverance, in their cruel suffering and death, strengthened by the spirit of Jesus, the martyrs, down the times, have proclaimed the gospel, and built the universal Church. It still happens here and there. If it could happen to Sr. Rani Maria Rani, or the Steins it can also happen to us also.
Response: Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God Almighty!
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