29 November 2013
Friday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
“Heaven and earth will pass away.” For the Jews of first century Palestine, heaven and earth did pass away with the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. What the people had held dear—what gave their world a center—was taken away in the march of the Roman army.
How many times have the heavens and earth passed away in any number of smaller ways? I think of our ancestor who left their different countries behind to travel to a new land. What must have haunted their minds as they looked behind them at their culture, language, and heritage fading on the horizon? What of the countless people in the last century who have been driven from homeland by war and even genocide? The loss of heaven and earth is not so infrequent as we might think.
Looking to the future, we must all face the question of loss. That which seemed eternal and unchanging in our youth soon proves to be all too transitory. The sureties of the past may not reassure us in the future. But the Lord promises that His Word will remain through it all. His creativity never runs dry. His call never fades. While the world tears down, His Spirit bids us build again until the day we inherit a heavenly mansion.