Tuesday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
While yesterday’s reading recounted the decree of King Cyrus for the Jerusalem Temple to be rebuilt, today we hear of the fulfillment of the dream. The temple would stand as the great reminder of God’s presence to Israel until the Romans destroyed it in AD 70. Can God’s favor or presence be reduced to a building? But surely The Lord wants to make His presence known through the monuments we build to His Name! Yet how fleeting are God’s traces left in the stones of this earth.
When walking through one the many Jesuit high schools or colleges, admiring the beautiful architecture, the thought often imposes itself upon the mind: “not one stone will be left upon another.” Today we build, but tomorrow another tears down. It is not our handiwork which endures, but only God’s Word. Easy enough to say in the abstract, but what will be the reaction when it is my work–however faithfully executed–which crumbles? Will I have the faith to believe that the only true immortality passes through the death of this world into the restoration only achieved in Christ?