It seems that today's Gospel, using the powerful imagery that Jesus evokes, wants to tell us that when everything seems to be falling apart, we are to do exactly what he tells us at the end of his discourse:
"When these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand."
It’s interesting to think about the attitude Jesus invites us to have, precisely when humanly we seem to be experiencing upheaval, crisis, and tragedy. If we remember that just when everything seems destroyed, God is building something new, it can help us not to succumb completely to that destruction.
No caterpillar could endure its dissolution if it weren’t because it felt a persistence in itself that eventually reveals the hidden butterfly that was already potentially within it. Externally we see something unraveling, but from that termination, something better is being born that is unimaginable until we experience it.
This life is a time of hope, that is, a time when we believe that there is a light hidden in the darkness. Having hope is not having light, but believing that it exists, and that it will eventually reveal itself and have the last word.
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Father Luigi Maria Epicoco is a priest of the Aquila Diocese and teaches Philosophy at the Pontifical Lateran University and at the ISSR ‘Fides et ratio,’ Aquila. He dedicates himself to preaching, especially for the formation of laity and religious, giving conferences, retreats and days of recollection. He has authored numerous books and articles. Since 2021, he has served as the Ecclesiastical Assistant in the Vatican Dicastery for Communication and columnist for the Vatican’s daily newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.
