Robert Barron - A New World Unveiled
Peace be with you. Friends, we come to the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, so just one more week in the liturgical year. We're coming toward the end of the year, and as is typical, the church gives us readings of an apocalyptic nature, so readings about the end times. The first one for today is from the wonderful Book of Daniel, one of my favorites in the Old Testament. A strange book full of different types of literature really. But you'll find in Daniel some apocalyptic texts. Now, one that's very important in terms of the New Testament is found in Daniel, 7. Daniel has a vision. He said, "I saw the ancient one," so God, "on a throne". Then he says, "Coming on the clouds, one like a son of man," he says rather enigmatically.
But this one like a son of man takes his seed at the right hand of the ancient of days and the ancient of days, hands over to him power as though he's the kind of plenipotentiary and I say, okay, what does all that mean? Well, it haunted the imaginations, especially of first century Jews. God is going to give power to one like a son of man who is going to rule and reign in his name, a messianic figure indeed, but one of cosmic significance, not just one more or just a Davidic king, an earthly king, but a cosmic ruler. Now, how important this text is becomes especially clear when we look at the scene of Jesus, at the trial of Jesus, the end of his life. When they ask him, "Are you the Messiah"? "I am and you will see the son of man coming on the clouds in glory".
That's when the high priest tore his robes because he thought he'd heard blasphemy. What was Jesus doing? He was citing precisely Daniel 7 and claiming that identity as his own. He's the one to whom God the Father will give power to reign. Look in the Acts of the Apostles, the risen and ascended Jesus, the one now who governs the world. The apocalyptic vision in Daniel is the revelation of really who Jesus is. All right, so keep all that in mind. That's reading number one, and it haunts our gospel. The gospel taken from Mark 13 has Jesus and the disciples now looking up at the great temple in Jerusalem.
Now, I've said this before, to you, to get the sense of the temple, you'd have to combine the White House and the Capitol and the National Cathedral or something. If you're Catholic, something like St. Peter's Basilica. It was this building of enormous central importance for an ancient Jew. It was the political and cultural and of course religious center of his consciousness, and trust me, the people in ancient Israel, had never seen a building as magnificent as the Temple in Jerusalem. We're used through photographs and all that to see a lot of beautiful things, but people in the ancient world who didn't travel that widely, for a Jew to see the Temple in Jerusalem and covered in jewels, and it was the most splendid thing he'd ever seen. It was the house of God. The disciples are admiring it and Jesus says, "Oh no, the days are coming, when not one stone of that will be left upon another".
Let's say you're with a beloved Catholic priest and you're visiting St. Peter's Basilica, and you're looking up and you're saying, "Oh, look at how beautiful Michelangelo's dome and the architecture and the splendor of it," and that priest were to say to you, "No, days are coming when that whole thing is going to be knocked down". You're a patriotic American and you're standing in front of the Capitol, beautiful dome and all of its splendor, and then someone says that same thing to you, someone that you love and admire, "No, the days are coming when that whole building is going to be knocked down". That's the state of mind that we're in now as we begin this gospel, and then Jesus turns up the heat. Listen, "In those days after tribulation, the sun will be darkened. The moon will not give its light. The stars will be falling from the sky and the powers in the heavens will be shaken".
You say, okay, he's talking here about the end of the world, isn't he? The end of the space-time continuum, the collapse of the cosmos. Well, I don't know, and here's why I don't know, because listen a little further on what the Lord says. "Amen I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place". Well, if we're to take this literally, sun and moon falling from the sky, stars collapsing, the universe coming to an end, that clearly didn't happen in Jesus' generation. If this is meant in a literal cosmic sense, then Jesus is either a liar or he's deeply deceived. So how do we make sense of this, this apocalyptic? Well, remember what the word means.
Apocalypses does not mean end of the world, it means unveiling. That's why Apocalypses Greek is translated to Latin as revelatio, right? Taking the vellum, taking the veil away, unveiling. What's being unveiled? I would indeed say what's being unveiled is a new world, but not so much in the physical cosmic sense, but listen again now to this language. "In those days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light. The stars will be falling from the sky". For ancient peoples, this was the way in which you guided your journeying. We have GPS now, but they would look up the position of the sun and the moon and the stars, and literally by their light, that's how they made their way. These were if you want, the tools of navigation through the world, the way they situated themselves and then listen, "The powers in the heavens will be shaken".
Well, they imagined that there were in the upper realms, there were these spiritual powers that had control over things on earth. They too were sort of the way they understood the world. You see the point here is, the days are coming, Jesus says, when all of this will be shaken, all of this will give way. Why? Because a new world is going to be unveiled. Even the most beautiful things like the temple in Jerusalem that belong to the old world, that's going to give way. Remember in the Gospel of John, "I'm going to tear down this place," the temple. Again, how shocking that was to ancient Jews. "I'm going to tear down this place" See a new world, everybody, is going to emerge out of the old world. We find in the first letter of Peter, a new heavens and a new earth are being anticipated.
So you say, okay, I guess I'm following you, that it's not about the physical cosmos so much, but a new world, a new way of understanding, a new way of navigating. So what is that and how will it take place within Jesus' own generation? Here, I think is the answer. The answer is the dying and the rising of Jesus, what we call the Paschal Mystery. The death of Jesus, what is that? Well, that's what happens in the old world. That's when the powers that govern the old world, that's our usual way of navigating. Jesus, who kind of turned everything upside down, well, the powers came after him and they destroyed him. That's Rome. It's Israel. It's all the fallen human beings.
That's the old world brought him to the cross. But in now, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, what emerges? A new world. A new world, I don't know any other way to put it. A whole new world has opened up because now we know, what? Death does not have the final word. Death is not the definitive end. And those political powers that predicated themselves upon the fear of death, the threat of death, they do not hold sway any longer. See, all of these texts, everybody, every bit of the New Testament is trying to communicate to us now, even across the 2000 years, trying to communicate to us that something so strange has happened, something so novel, something so unexpected, that it's like the old world has given way. Our old manner of navigating, it doesn't make any sense.
In fact, a new heavens has emerged. There are new stars, a new son, new moon, meaning a new way of navigating ourselves through the world. Think of the first followers of Jesus that go forth with this word of resurrection on their lips, with this word of the Lordship of Jesus and what happened to them? Well, they all got killed for their trouble because they were navigating in this old world, but with a whole new world on their lips, and they were embodying a new world. That's what's been unveiled through the dying and the rising of Jesus. Think of the saints here up and down the ages. They're strange, the saints, and you see why. Because they're in this old world if you want, but they're not of it. They don't operate according to its logic. They don't navigate by those old stars.
Think about Mother Teresa. I'm going to go in the streets of the worst slum in the world and begin caring for the sick and the dying. What are you crazy? Yeah, you are crazy, by the old standards. Francis of Assisi, I'm going to take all my clothes off and I'm just going to live in complete reliance upon God's providence. What are you out of your mind? Yeah, of course you are. Maximilian Kolbe, when he by a kind of miracle, escapes death. Doesn't say, "Oh, thank God I escaped". No, he said, "Look, I'll give my life in this man's place".
What are you out of your mind? Yeah. He's not navigating by the old stars. Something's fallen apart. Something's fallen away and a new world has emerged. The world of the resurrected Christ, where we're not governed by the fear and the threat of death. We're not convinced this world is all there is. We see things now within the horizon of God. Now, with all that in mind, I want to go back to another line, just after Jesus describes the sun and moon falling, listen to what he says, "Then they will see the son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory, and then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds".
There's another reference to Daniel 7. Who is this one like a son of man, coming on the clouds that Daniel predicted, that Jesus makes reference to? Who is he? It's the risen Christ himself. It's the risen Christ himself, is the one who emerges when the old world gives way. He is the definitive sun and moon and stars now that the old ones have fallen from the sky. He's the power that governs our lives now that these old powers have fallen. See everybody, that's the apocalypse. That's the great unveiling. This text is not just for those who maybe way in the distant future live at the time when the physical universe collapses. No, it's for all time. It's for our time. It's for our generation. Something has been unveiled, has been revealed to us, and it's the Lordship of the risen Christ. And God bless you.