Homily for the Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

 Something Beyond Words Is Being Unveiled

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Church of St. Bridget of Minneapolis, MN

November 17, 2024

On the surface, there’s something spooky, unsettling, upsetting and dire about today’s  Gospel (Mark 13:24-32). But at the depth, it’s actually good news. Let’s look at it on the surface level first. We are told that Jesus and his disciples are in the great Temple of Jerusalem. For any first century Jew, coming to the capital city from the countryside and seeing the Temple would surely be an overwhelming experience. Beyond doubt, the Temple was the most beautiful and impressive thing the disciples of Jesus had ever seen. As they stand in front of this imposing building, admiring its glory and splendor, marveling at its size, beauty and significance, Jesus drops a bomb on them, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be one stone left upon another that will not be thrown down” (Mark 13:2). Is that what his disciples were expecting to hear? Not at all!Could you imagine what their reaction would be? It is like an American standing in front of the White House or a devoted Catholic standing in front of St. Peter’s Square in Rome and then hearing an itinerant preacher announcing the destruction of those iconic buildings. As a matter of fact, we have nothing today that can rightly and appropriately be compared to what the Temple meant for first century Jews. For them, the Temple was in practical sense, the dwelling place of Yahweh. It was the center of Jewish life. And ancient accounts tell us that the Temple was spectacular in its size and in its decoration. It was a wonder to behold in the ancient world.

I have been to the Cathedral of St. Paul here in our Archdiocese a few times. I was there on Monday, October 28, 2024 for the Episcopal ordination of Bishop Kevin Kenney, one of the auxiliary bishops. I tell you, each time I approach that cathedral, I am filled with amazement at its terrific and towering size, its strength and ruggedness, its glory and beauty. I usually think of its spiritual power, and what it means for us as Catholics. Its obvious durability and strength, its towering height and massive size all speak of the  strength and persistence of our faith, hope and love. At the Episcopal ordination of Bishop Kenny, I remember turning to Father John Schmidt and saying to him, “I’m not even sure that any natural disaster will be able to bring down this cathedral. I think it is built to last forever. The stones used in building it are indescribably strong and massive.” And he kind of agreed with me. Could you imagine taking adults for OCIA (The Order of Christian Initiation of Adults) to the cathedral as part of their faith formation, and as they watch, admire with great delight that awesome and extremely sacred place, I said to them, “ the days are coming when every stone of this building will be thrown down?” Imagine the great shock they would have, and I believe some of them might be disappointed with me. That’s probably the way Jesus’ disciples felt. As if that was not enough, Jesus adds, “In those days after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken” (Mark 13:24-25). Now, he is blithely saying to his disciples as they are relishing a great moment that it is not only the great Temple that will be blown away, but the whole world is going to be destroyed.

Sisters and brothers, how do we read the Lord’s unsettling language? By the way, it will be a great theological mistake to take Jesus’ language as an actual description of cosmological events. Check this out! Right after Jesus made those frightening comments, he said, “Amen I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” He is talking about the destruction of the Temple; he is also talking about the destruction of time and space, the falling of the stars from the sky, the darkening of the sun and the moon. To make matters worse, he says all of these will happen in “this generation” meaning the generation of his disciples. On the surface, Jesus’ language is very problematic. And if you take his declaration in a strictly literal sense to mean something that will happen in the cosmos, it means Jesus is a liar. It means he is a very bad prophet because we all know that space and time has continued and the universe didn’t end in the first century. That means we are compelled to look at the depth of Jesus’ declaration. We are invited to look at his language with fresh eyes in order to understand exactly what he is speaking about.

Littered in the Gospels is Jesus speaking in parables— the parable of the sower, the parable of the good Samaritan, the parable of the mustard seed and on and on. He also speaks in an exaggerated language called hyperbole in literature— “Call no one on earth your father, you have but one father in heaven,” “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife, and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” etc (Luke 14:26). In today’s Gospel, Jesus is not speaking in parable; he is not speaking in hyperbole, rather he is using the apocalyptic language. The apocalyptic language is a kind of literary genre, a kind of literature. The Book of Daniel in the OT is the best example of apocalyptic literature. The Book of Revelation in the NT is another beautiful example of it. The word “apocalypse” is from the Greek word “apokalypsis” which means “unveiling,” taking the veil away. It does not mean the end of the world. When “apokalypsis was translated into Latin, it came out as “revelatio, which means pulling back of the veil. “Revelatio” gives us the English word revelation. That’s why we call the last book of the Bible the Book of Revelation. It is not the book of the end of the world, rather the book of the great unveiling of hidden truth. Something hidden is being disclosed to us. 

But what’s being unveiled here? What’s being revealed? The death and Resurrection of the Lord! In the densely Passion narratives, we saw all forms of human dysfunction on full display. Jesus is met by hatred, by denial, by betrayal, by violence, by stupidity, by institutional injustice and by incomparable cruelty. He was humiliated by powers and principalities, by the basic assumptions, and by the normal way people organize their lives at the time. All of these brought Jesus to the cross. But then, in that generation, in the time of people who listened to him, Jesus triumphantly rose from the dead. What does that represent? It represents the falling of the sun, the moon and sky and the shaking of the heavenly powers. Why? Because one of the basic principles that impact the way people live their lives is that death is final. Death is absolute. Death is the end. And corrupt political powers have used the fear of death to silence people in order to carry out their dirty activities. But now, through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus who suffers great injustice in the hands of those powers, and rises from the dead is showing us that death itself does not have the final word. Death does not have the final say. His Resurrection has undermined and damaged the powers of death. And by extension, all those economic and cultural forces by which we run our lives have been shaken. They have fallen to the ground. It was the dying and rising of Jesus that pulled back the veil, and revealed the deepest truth of things— that God’s love is more powerful than death, more powerful than all those institutions that rely on the fear of death. So, we can no longer live our lives the old ways. We can no longer be governed by worldly standards, but by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is now our sun, moon and stars. We can no longer allow the secular culture to set the standard. We can no longer allow corrupt politicians to tell us what to do. The new spiritual GPS is the Holy Spirit. 

May God bless you and give you his peace!