THE TEXT BELOW IS THE TRANSCRIPTION OF THE VIDEO COMMENTARY BY FR. FERNANDO ARMELLINI

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Happy Sunday and a good beginning of Advent to all.

To understand the words of Jesus that we are going to hear in today’s Gospel passage, we must mention the context in which Jesus pronounced them. He is on the Mount of Olives, and he is sitting with his disciples; he is contemplating the marvelous temple of which he foretold the destruction. The time of the Passover is near, and pilgrims are arriving from everywhere. At a certain point, Jesus begins to speak of a world that is about to end, and the disciples understand that he is not referring to the material world; he is referring to another world marked by sin, evil, injustice, and violence, and it announces a joyful event. This cruel world is destined to disappear.

And to present this joyful message, he uses apocalyptic language which his listeners understand very well but may be a bit enigmatic for us. It says that the sun will be darkened; the moon will no longer give its light; the stars will fall from the sky; the powers of the heavens shall be destroyed.

This is apocalyptic imagery that Jesus uses; the extinction of the light of the sun, the moon, and the stars does not refer to the stars of the sky that we contemplate but refers to what these stars represented in the Ancient Middle East; they were celestial deities that everybody worshipped because they held them responsible for the life of the world and the destinies of peoples.

In the background, they see Aton, the Sun God of the Egyptians, shining his rays from above over the newborn pharaoh and his wife Nefertiti, holding in her arms their three daughters. In Egypt, they worshipped the god Aten and in Mesopotamia, they worshipped Anu, the Moon God; they worshipped Ishtar, the morning star, Venus. Jesus says that the old world ruled by idols has ended. These gods, these stars, are about to lose their luster; the eclipse of all the false gods that people have invented has come. And it is from these gods that all the disasters of your lives come.

There are many material realities that people have worshiped and continue to deify. They place money in the sky as their idol, and when people worship the money god, when it is he who directs people’s choices when the purpose of life is to accumulate money, we have that world that we know so well, a world immersed in the darkness of selfishness, a world in which every day, we see a procession unfolding before our eyes, a procession of sufferings, of dramas and tears.

The mighty has always been placed in the heavens, the pharaohs, the supermen… No. The heavens are not their home; heaven is the abode of the one God, and all idols must be expelled from heaven. All these stars must be returned to earth; they are people, not god; and the divine aura that envelops them must be dissolved.

An anonymous prophet, who lived about 450 B.C., a time marked by social injustice, moral degradation, and religious corruption, was sent by God to announce hope for the poor and said: ‘The Lord will one day create new heavens and a new earth.’ Jesus refers precisely to this expectation of the new world, of the new heavens, cleansed from idols. The narrative of the Garden of Eden is not the lament of a lost paradise; it is the project of a new world that we are called to build. It is not an unattainable dream.

The disciple is sure that Christ’s promise will be fulfilled. Our brethren of faith of the early generations believed in the disappearance of the old world and the birth of the new world. In the Second Letter of Peter, it says: ‘According to the promise, we look for a new heaven and a new earth, wherein shall reign righteousness,’ the righteousness of God. It is the world of peace, love, joy, of fraternity that we are called to build.

We ask ourselves now who will come to start this world? Jesus, of course; let us listen to the name by which he introduces himself:

“For as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.”

Son of Man is an expression that in the Gospels, we find about seventy times in the mouth of Jesus, who calls himself the Son of Man. Therefore, it is a significant expression. ‘The foxes have their dens; the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ He is this Son of man. “Who do they say the Son of man is?” That is, ‘what is it that they understood about me?’ I am the Son of man. He shall be delivered into the hands of men and shall be killed. He is this Son of man.

Why does Jesus define himself in this way? To understand it, we must refer to a vision that is told in chapter 7 of the book of Daniel, where the prophet says that he saw coming out of the sea (the symbol of all that is contrary to life) four beasts, one worse than the other. The first is a lion, the symbol of the Babylonian empire. Look behind me at the walls of the famous processional way leading to the Ishtar Gate in Babylon, where the lions are depicted, the Babylonians who mutilated all peoples. How long did their reign last? Until a bear came, the Medes, who conquered Babylon. Then came a leopard, the Persians, swift as the leopards conquered the whole Ancient Middle East. But it’s not over; then came a more terrible beast, Alexander the Great.

To what are all these empires compared if not to beasts that ravage and plunder peoples? A beast dominated and maimed until a stronger beast came onto the scene. If you want to see the famous bas-reliefs, they are in the British Museum; they are 3 km of bas-reliefs that adorned the halls of the palace of the king of Nineveh, the Assyrians.

If you look at these bas-reliefs, you will notice what these people achieved, what exploits these kings boasted of, and what was the ideal of the cultivated man in these people. Observe king Assur-Banihal fearlessly facing a lion. In these bas-reliefs are represented only by scenes of wars, violence, massacres of enemies, of fights against lions. Observe Assur-Banihal shooting an arrow against the enemies. The logic that governed the pharaonic empire in Egypt was the same. Ramses II, who kills enemies, crushes the head of one enemy and strikes another. This is a world of beasts, not a human world.

In fact, in the vision of the prophet Daniel, after the beasts, an old man enters the scene wrapped in a white robe, symbol of the light of God; he represents God. Then among the clouds of heaven appears a son of man and approaches the old man. This son of man, in Hebrew ‘ben-adam’, simply means man; that is, after all the beasts that appeared in the world, these empires that ruled over humanity based on violence, force, and competition; now, at last, a man enters the scene, not a beast.

And the old man, i.e., God, gives to this man the power, the glory, the kingdom and says that all peoples will be subject to him and his kingdom shall never be destroyed. Whereas before another, succeeded one beast now begins a truly human kingdom that will last forever. Jesus called himself the Son of Man precisely to say that with him begins new humanity, true humanity, capable of love, not of competing, not of crushing the brother; humanity of lambs. Let us remember that when Pilate presents Jesus to the people, what does he say: “Behold the man.” This is the man; not the one who kills but the one who gives life. This is truly man. One is not a man when one dominates but when you serve, when you love.

The answer of the chief priests and the guards, what was it? They said to take him out of the way. They were the ones who wanted to perpetuate the old world; they told them to crucify him. The beasts cannot stand man; he is too different from them; and his adversaries were annoyed by his presence, so they attacked him. Jesus was rejected precisely because he was the Son of Man, a real man. Naturally, all those who want to be men like him will not have a different fate. And Jesus said, if they have persecuted the Son of Man, they will also persecute you if you are a man.

We wonder now how this struggle will end between the world of the beasts which wants to continue, and the human world proposed by Jesus. It is told at the end of his book by the seer of the Apocalypse, in chapter 21, where he says: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and earth had disappeared, and the sea was no more.” This is how human history will end. God’s plan wants a true, new humanity, will end with the disappearance of the sea. The sea will be no more. It is what Daniel saw the beasts coming out of the sea. This sea shall be no more.

With what disposition shall we now await the coming of the Son of man? Jesus tells us now, taking the account of the flood as a reference. Let us listen:

“In those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage, up to the day that Noah entered the ark. They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away. So will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man.”

Jesus parallels what happened in Noah’s time and what can happen today. What were they doing in Noah’s time? They ate, they drank, they took wives, they took husbands… they did nothing strange or wrong. They did what we do today. Of course, there are two ways of eating and drinking; there are two ways of living sexuality. Some feed themselves thinking only of themselves; they hoard bread, they never have enough, they don’t care about the needs of others, or they even get upset if someone approaches them to take some bread from them. If, on the contrary, others are content with their daily bread, they share this bread with their brothers and sisters. They are different ways of satisfying one’s own biological needs. Some think only of their pleasure and others are only happy when they can make the other person happy. Selfishness is what characterizes the old world. Sharing, loving, care for others is the new world.

What was the mistake made by Noah’s generation? It is enough to read the biblical account in the book of Genesis, chapter 6, which explains the reason for the flood; of course, God did not send any flood; it is the image of a humankind that does not fit into God’s design. The sacred text says that humankind was corrupt before God and full of violence. That is what characterizes the old humanity: the competition that always leads to violence, oppression, to the attempt to enslave the weakest.

The people at the time of Noah belonged to this humanity which was destined to disappear. They, on the other hand, believed that it would be eternal, that it would continue forever, but God does not accept this humanity, and they should have understood that an epochal change was about to take place; there were clear signs that it was about to happen and they should have grasped them; they had seen Noah building the ark; they did not become aware and they did not accept to enter the new humanity. The flood came and swept them all away.

Jesus concludes: “So shall it be at the coming of the Son of Man.” He is speaking to us. The Son of Man is coming today in his Gospel, and we must be careful because we could repeat today on our part, the error of the flood generation. Jesus shows us the true face of God and the true face of man. We could turn only to our material needs: eat, drink, take wife, take a husband… important material realities, but they are not absolute. We must hold on to how the Son of Man proposes to live these realities. We are interested in the family, the home, the profession; these are very important things, but how to live these realities? In the old way or as new men? This is what Jesus tells us; to be careful; ‘Do not repeat before the coming of the Son of Man the mistake made by those who lived in the time of Noah. You would be cut off from the history of God.’

I said there are two ways of eating, drinking, and living sexuality. One selfishly and one driven by love, by the joy of seeing the other person happy. Now Jesus tells us that there are two ways to carry even one’s profession. Let us listen:

“Two men will be out in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, and one will be left.”

Jesus gives two examples to show that there are two different ways of carrying out the profession; one is that of the one who has not accepted the kingdom of God, the proposal of the new man that Jesus makes; the other is the one who has accepted God’s kingdom and entered the new world. Jesus takes these two examples of the activities that men and women carried out in his time. The men went out to work in the fields and the women stayed at home, milled the grain, prepared the flour, and made bread.

The first example he gives is the profession of the men, and he says: “Two men will be out in one field: one will be taken.” Or rather, one shall be received: παραλαμβάνεται, that is: one shall partake in the new proposal of man, will carry out his activity according to the image of the new man proposed from the Gospel. “And one will be left” – ἀφίεται – will be lost. When the Gospel enters a person’s life, they no longer do the work as before; they do it; differently, and it has different objectives.

Let’s take some examples to understand well. When the tax collectors came to the Baptist, people who were always frowned upon, the Baptist does not say that they have to leave to collect taxes; it is a service that must be done, but it can be done in two ways: One is that of those who think of taking advantage of their position to steal, and the other one is that of those who exercise this profession carefully because they want that money to be used for the good of the whole community. The Baptist also addressed soldiers, what should we do? The Baptist does not say to throw down your arms, to leave their profession. It is necessary to maintain order in society, but this profession can be done in two different ways. One is that of those who take advantage of their strength to intimidate and commit abuses; the other is those who put themselves at the service of the common good, of the standard order.

Let’s take now another example taken from daily life as Jesus did, but from our life; two doormen in the same building: the first one hears the doorbell of someone knocking at the door; he looks at the monitor and sees that there is an older woman who enters, and she is disturbed; she doesn’t know where to go; he immediately leaves the door and goes to meet her politely, greets her, smiles, and then helps her up the steps, accompanies her to the elevator and makes some jokes because he realizes that she is sad. This is someone who iswelcomed, performs his profession as a service that makes needy people happy.

Then his colleague arrives to relieve him. He’s pretty depressed; it’s Monday, he’s got the sports paper under his arm, and his favorite team lost the day before. He sits on the porch in a somber mood and begins to leaf through the newspaper greedily. He hears the doorbell ringing and sees on the monitor that a little old lady enters; a little embarrassed, she doesn’t know where to go; the doorman notices that it will take her half a minute to get there and he can go on reading the newspaper may be to find the reason why his team lost… it’s the referee’s fault, naturally. When the old lady arrives, he lets her talk, but he doesn’t look away from the newspaper, doesn’t care about the old lady, and finally says, ‘there’s the elevator,’ and keeps reading.

There are two ways of doing an activity. One is that of the one who has entered the new world, carries it out according to the proposal made by Christ; the other is that of the one who thinks only of his interest. “Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken, and one will be left.” Let’s take an example of food preparation. It is in a restaurant where many foreigners pass by. who come to visit the city; those people will come maybe once, and then they won’t be seen again; so I can also take advantage and put in some leftovers because the important thing for me is to win. This is the old way.

The new form is that of someone who became a new person having accepted the proposal of Jesus of Nazareth prepares everything well, very carefully, even if he never sees those people again; she cares that they go away happy. These are two ways of carrying out the profession. We can review our professions as they can always be fulfilled in two different ways. Kindness, smile, sensitivity, concern for others, and friendliness are not part of the employment contract. One is accepted, one becomes part of the new world, of the kingdom of God, of those who have as the objective of their activity the attention to the need of his brother. The other is left behind.

One is saved, that is, behaves as a true man because he loves, while the other remains shrouded in the darkness of selfishness. Not all entered Noah’s ark, only a few. It is no wonder that even in the kingdom of God not all enter, and many are left out. They have heard the Beatitudes of Jesus, but they prefer those of this world; they are not accepted. The alternative between these two options is dire because the choice is between being a man and not being a man.

And now, the recommendation is to be attentive. One could get distracted and not notice the coming of the Son of Man who comes to receive you in the new world. Let us listen:

“Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man comes.”

Do not fall asleep, says Jesus, stay awake always, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. Unfortunately, many translations put the verb in the future tense: ‘you do not know on what day the Lord will come.’ Then was born the catechesis that waved like a scarecrow the coming of the Lord, that is, like the time of the coming of the final judgment of life. This catechesis is detrimental because that encounter with the Lord, which should have been desired for the whole of life, was instead feared.

The Lord comes today with his Gospel; he comes to propose to you the new man, and you must be attentive not to lose the opportunity to let yourself be involved in the kingdom of God. To recommend this vigilance, Jesus uses the image of the thief who arrives very suddenly and unexpectedly. The rabbis did not use the image of the thief, but the Christians liked it very much because it was the so-called ‘thief.’

How to remain vigilant, to be attentive. How to stay awake? I would suggest cultivating silent reflection; in all this confusion in the media, cultivating sensitivity, the evangelical values; not to be dazed by the publicity of the fashions, of the current morals, of the ‘so do all,’ of saying that everything is fine when I like something. To be vigilant means to pay attention and to be able to discern between what makes you like the Son of Man, what makes you a true person, and that which dehumanizes you, even though the majority approves it.

We may ask ourselves, are there many or few today who stay awake to welcome the coming of the Lord? Perhaps they are few, as in Noah’s time; there were not many that understood that a new world was about to be born. Do not be surprised if they are few; be alert not to miss the opportunity of your life.

I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week.