12 November 2015
Memorial of Saint Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr
By his response to the questions the Pharisees asked him, Jesus assures us that it is an exercise of futility to calculate when the end of the world will come, but it is a lesson we have never learned. Why? To anticipate the extraordinary is a constant temptation for us all. The ordinary is – well, ordinary.
But Jesus has already set up his kingdom in our hearts. We don’t have to seek the extraordinary. We find him, who is so beautifully described in the 1streading, in the ordinary. The extraordinary is found in the ordinary, the prosaic. That is one of the paradoxes of our religion.
Then, speaking of his glorious return at the end of the world, Jesus makes reference to his Passion. He will pass to his glory through his death, to the extraordinary through the ordinary. All of us are called to participate in his Passion before being united to him in his Resurrection.
Jesus has given us himself in the Eucharist, which gives us the strength to live as he did. This ordinary looking bread, that is broken at Mass and in which we share, is the seed of life eternal.