HE IS NEAR
November 14, 2021: A Reflection for the 33rd Sunday in O.T., Year B
Mark 13:24-32
In the same way, when you see these things happening, know that he is near, at the gates. (Mk 13:17)
This is a Gospel that needs a broader vision in order to grasp it. It took many years for me to hear it proclaimed without dread filling my heart, and confusion, my understanding. I still can’t say that I understand it, but what I am certain about is that it is part of God’s incredible plan for creation and summing up all things in Christ. It’s like any plan. If you isolate any one part of it, the whole becomes distorted and you lose focus.
Jesus uses the example of a fig tree waking to life in the light and warmth of spring. A process leading to transformation takes place. The tree must remain in the ‘death’ of winter: cold, naked, vulnerable. And if it could speak, it would probably tell us it is an experience that was not only painful, but seemed to point to death. But that is not the whole story. It is a necessary part of coming to life. A time of yielding to the elements, of letting go into the sabbath of cold and dark before the resurrection. Of surrendering to a plan of which it knows nothing but which will ultimately usher in new life. Letting go into the process of life. And then, inexorably, light and warmth soften its branches to become supple and tender. The sun warms its tight buds and the hard shell breaks open to unfurl tender leaves. Summer has come and the time of bearing fruit, and leaves dancing in the sun. The process continues… Leaves are transformed into color by yielding to loss. They let go of the green of chlorophyll to become kaleidoscopes of color and yield to the breath of autumn winds to fall humbly to the earth and begin again the process.
All creation is part of the process. We all fit into it, according to how our Creator has seen fit. And it moves forward under God’s direction. The stars, the planets, humans, animals, everything. We are all inserted into this tremendous plan of God. It began in love and love is its culmination: the summing up of all things in the Christ. Life is ‘done unto’ us. No one part of it is the whole story. There will be pain and suffering, sure. Times of darkness and times of light. But only by yielding to the process of God’s great plan of love, will we find the peace of letting the current carry us. We are carried forward, all of us together, into an Ocean of life and love whom we call The Father. He is near. HE is the process.