33rd Sunday Reflection: Death – The Temple In Ruins
Franciscan Reflections From The Hermitage – Death – The Temple In Ruins – 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C – (Luke 21:5-19)
Death is an unpopular subject, a very unpopular subject, virtually taboo… valid only at funerals and in law courts as we claim our share of the boodle or seek compensation.
We put death away from us, along with our elderly, sick, incapacitated, retarded, and mentally stressed… all neatly put away into hospitals, hospices, and nursing homes so that we do not have to see or think about death… or them.
Inherent human dignity and the sacredness of life have been so appropriated by the strident call of those fighting for the innocence of unborn life, that the living and suffering masses no longer bear this mark in our consciousness.
When someone is given a diagnosis of a life-threatening illness such as cancer or a neurological, degenerative, respiratory, renal, or cardiac condition, friends and family whom we thought would be our rock, are either absent or lamenting their possible personal changed circumstances.
We have placed creation, creatures, the earth, water, and even clean air into a basket of commodities for exploitation and the creation of wealth. The natural progression of this economic view now also places value on people as generators of wealth and consumers who keep the market going by spending money on worthless things and selfish pursuits.
Looking at our own death, our own personal last days is considered ‘inappropriate’. Yet this call can become the looking glass through which we gauge how we should be living our lives. To decide on what are the things that are of true value so that we may persevere in the strength of truth, love, compassion, and forgiveness.
The Church puts the last days before us today so that we may judge our own canon; may evaluate what is right and what is wrong in our present-day living, to recognize and acknowledge our own paranoia and the nightmares of our illusions. This is a journey to see ourselves as we are reflected from the face of the cross so that the Spirit of God may lead us to see Truth correctly and to re-direct our lives accordingly. Truth is that relationship with God that resonates within us.
Truth is symphonic… the way of listening to God’s Word… when we have listened all the way through, learned it, appreciated and enjoyed it, when we have come to love and live according to it so that when someone strikes a false note, we recognize it immediately. Hey, that doesn’t sound right! One of the musicians has made an error and has played a false note. Where the note is harsh and strident, lacks beauty, goodness, compassion, and love… this is how we come to know truth from falseness and duplicity, reality from paranoia… even within ourselves.
To hear and to bear the truth we first become silent, letting go of the strident sounds of our ongoing judgments, of who or what is valuable, together with that endless commentary that validates our choices.
The promise of our endurance that will end injustice, and oppression and that healing that will come about through truth, love, compassion, and forgiveness that leads to reconciliation and peace.
May our lives so resonate that goodness of God who looks on creation with the tenderness of a creator, the joy of a gardener, and the maternal heart of a mother.
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