Main news for 24 September 2024

It makes already almost two thousand years that people read these words and understand that it is about them. The increase of iniquities appear differently in different time: either it is the persecutions of Christians by the heathens, or it is the use of the state mechanisms of violence to guarantee the ideological integrity of the citizens, or it is war, racism, criminalization of the society, or it is the introduction of the psychology of consumption, or it is the political terrorism … But in every case the most terrible are not the cruelty of the rapists, but the quenching love of Christians. Jesus says: «Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul". To lose love means to kill the soul. “But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved". About what endurance is it? Does it mean looking with indifference to the evil that surrounds us? Of course not! To endure is to preserve love in any circumstances, to resist the bad outward, not allowing it to capture us from within. Such Divine forbearance, such endurance are the gift of the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit.

Commentators sometimes call today's passage the "little Apocalypse." This name is clearly connected with the fact that Jesus' account here of the end times recalls some descriptions of the "great Apocalypse," the Book of Revelation of John. And still, the differences between them are no fewer than the similarities. The chief difference is that Jesus tells His disciples about events that will occur during the lifetime of the first generation of Christians. The only exception is the conclusion of the account, which describes Christ's return in glory, verses 29-31. Jesus, as we see, connects it with the events of 70 AD, when, as a result of the anti-Roman uprising raised by the Zealots, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans after a long siege, and Jews were forbidden to settle in Judea, verse 15. By the "abomination of desolation" spoken of in the Book of Daniel, Jesus clearly means the desecration and destruction of the Temple by Roman soldiers when they took the city.

However, as the eyewitness to these events, the historian Flavius Josephus, reports, Christians and Pharisees left the city before the siege began, and the Christians, as we see, were in this case following a direct instruction from their Teacher, verses 16-20. Those who remained in the city, judging by the testimony of the same Flavius Josephus, really did suffer the terrible disasters about which Jesus had warned His disciples, verse 21. The uprising was preceded by a period of feverishly intense messianic expectations, when claimants to messiahship appeared literally every day. It is no accident that Jesus found it necessary to warn the disciples against being carried away by such false messiahs, verses 23-25. But the good news of the true Messiah had been heard throughout the Roman Empire even before 70 AD, verse 14.

Here a natural question arises: if Jesus' account concerns events that took place in the first decades of Christian history, how should we understand His words about the end of history, which was to come after those events? Jesus' account was so well known to the first generation of Christians that those who survived the catastrophe of 70 AD were in complete bewilderment: everything predicted by the Teacher had come true, and still He was not returning. Meanwhile Jesus Himself said nothing about dates: He only pointed to the events of 70 AD as the end of earthly history. Everything further evidently unfolds as part of some other process, no longer defined by this history.

Another history begins: the history of the Kingdom entering the world. It is a history in which each of us will have to take part in one way or another. And exactly what that participation will be depends only on us.

The prophetic discourse on the Mount of Olives, which we read today in the Gospel according to Matthew, has aroused enormous interest from the moment it was written. At times this interest took on entirely unhealthy proportions, especially in certain heretical sects. But Christians who were "normal" from the point of view of confession and mental health also did not ignore this text. Perhaps only Revelation can compare with it in this regard... There is something in us that draws our attention to the end of the world... Perhaps the madness of the world in which we live, apart from our will, calls up thoughts of the end in us... Or perhaps this is a manifestation of an instinctive fear of responsibility for sins?

Yet in the content of the words of the Lord Jesus, what matters for us is not only what horrors and cataclysms will accompany the end of the world. Much more important is the revelation of the end as such. For our attitude toward the horrors and madness that already exist depends substantially on this. It is one thing if this will go on endlessly: our wars, hostility and foolishness, our cruelty and helplessness, only occasionally marked by flights of the human spirit inspired by the touch of the Almighty. It is something altogether different if we believe the Lord's words that against the background of evil's apparent triumph there will come the day of God's victory, the day when the Creator's design will be fulfilled in full. And still more important for us is that this Day of the Lord has already come, when the Savior of the world ascended the Cross for our sake.