Coffee With God

Reflection: Luke 21:29-33

The Gospel continues with the theme of the end of things: the end of the world and our own end. Jesus uses the common-man’s language to teach his disciples about the Kingdom of God. All his listeners know very well how does a fig tree changes according to the change of Seasons. The Lord invites them to pay attention to understand what is going on in the world and in history. Today, He wants us to understand “the meaning of what is happening around us”. It is in answering these questions that we come to perceive the signs of the times. Everything will end, but God alone will remain. No one knows the exact time of one’s death. This is a tendency of the human mind – that we are so certain that we will die, but we live as if with a certainty that, “Not me, not immediately. I still have time!” We all have this weakness, this vulnerability. Pope Francis says, “the enemy, the spirit of the world, prevents us from preparing well for our death. This enemy would want to distract us from God and proposes to us a way of thinking which is according to our liking and conveniences. It does not want us to place ourselves before God and say: Lord, I am ready! Therefore, it is necessary to prepare well for that moment when the bell will ring, the moment when the Lord will knock on our door. Explaining the passage, Pope Francis gives a piece of advice to faithful: “Be ready to open the door with trust and confidence to the Lord who comes. All the things that we have collected, that we have saved, even good – we will not bring anything. But, yes, we move into the embrace of the Lord.” He invites us to think of our own death: “I will die, but when? The Lord knows it. I pray to the Lord: ” Lord, prepare my heart to die well, to die in peace, to die with hope.” This is the word that must always accompany our lives, the hope of living with the Lord here and then living with the Lord for ever. Let us pray for one another for this grace of dying in the presence of God.