25
Aug
Aug
Reflection: Matthew 24:42-51
The Gospel today speaks about the coming of the Lord at the end of time and exhorts us to be watchful, to watch. In the early Church, many believed that the end of this world was close at hand and that Jesus would return soon. Today, many people continue to believe that the end of the world is soon to happen. As the year 2000 approached, many were worried and anguished because of the proximity of the end of the world. Many times, these eschatological readings are used to frighten people and oblige them to take up some religious practices! The problems of the early Christian communities were very much similar. They waited for the second coming Jesus. There were people who no longer did any work because they thought that the end was so close at hand, within a few days or a few weeks so, “Why work, if Jesus will return soon?” (cf. 2 Th 3, 11). That is why St. Paul had to intervene and say: “Anyone who does not want to work, has no right to eat!” Others remained looking up at the sky, waiting for the return of Jesus in the clouds. In general the Christians lived with the expectation of the imminent coming of Jesus. Slowly, as period of waiting prolonged, they began to lose patience and became tired of waiting and would say: “He will never come back!” Up until now the coming of Jesus has not arrived! How can this delay be understood? It is because they are not aware that Jesus has already returned and lives in our midst: “I am with you always, till the end of time.” (Mt 28, 20). He is already at our side, in the struggle for justice, for peace, for life. Jesus says this very clearly. Nobody knows anything regarding the hour of his coming: “Concerning this day and this hour, nobody knows anything, neither the angels, or the Son, but only the Father. Reading this passage carelessly can lead us to a misunderstanding of the text. There are chances that we understand God as a punishing God who would condemn those bad people to the fires of hell. “Will flog him severely, and sentence him to the same fate as the hypocrites, where there will be lamenting and grinding of teeth,” reads the end of today’s Gospel. Is it not true that God is also presented as a merciful and forgiving God? Will such a forgiving God permit anyone to be condemned? Here, Matthew is making use of the scenes of punishments common in the earlier Persian Empire, of which his readers were well aware. Use threat to encourage compliance is a literary technique, applied well by the Evangelist. We believe in a forgiving God and not a punishing God