Just taking a glimpse of the news around the world might make us think that these beasts Daniel talks about in the first reading are for 2023 and not something from thousands of years ago. There is so much violence, war, and suffering around the world that it is almost hard to bear it all sometimes. We seem to never catch a break from it all. And those who are living in these violent situations are certainly not getting the peace they deserve either. These terrible beasts that seek to destroy human life seem very, very real.
Yet Daniel predicts that these beasts will be defeated by God and the Son of Man – Jesus Christ, for us Catholic Christians. Jesus says we will know our redemption is at hand by seeing these signs. When we hear of wars and famines, we know that bad times are here but that God is about to save us. And Jesus says this for our generation – for the 21stcentury, not just the 1st century. And it is Jesus’s words that defeat these terrible beasts – of mass poverty, violent warfare, and bitter division. All things will eventually pass away, but Jesus’s words will not. We can trust that we will have life with Christ, even in death and suffering. Even if we are in pain now, God is holding us in his arms closely, suffering with us. Jesus on the cross is evidence of the reality that God suffers with us. But one day, our salvation will come, and we can trust in the words of Jesus that his promise is real and that we will be with him in paradise and get the rest we need.