A Reflection on Luke 21:5-11
You
know that feeling when something you thought was permanent just... isn't? Maybe
it's a relationship that felt rock-solid until it wasn't. Maybe it's a job you
thought you'd have forever. Maybe it's looking at your childhood home before it
gets sold or watching a loved one's health decline. That sinking feeling, that's
where Jesus meets his disciples in Luke 21. They're staring at the Temple, this
massive, gleaming structure that had taken decades to build, admiring its
beauty and permanence. And Jesus just drops it on them: "All this you see,
the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another." Imagine
their faces. This wasn't just a building; it was the place where heaven touched
earth, where God lived among them. If this could fall, what couldn't?
Here's the thing that makes this passage so unsettling:
Jesus isn't trying to scare them for fun. He's preparing them for reality.
False messiahs will come. Wars will break out. Earthquakes will shake the
ground beneath your feet. Famines will empty your stomach. Plagues will empty
your streets. And the kicker? "All this is but the beginning of the birth
pangs." Not the end, the beginning. We want Jesus to promise us
smooth sailing, but instead, he promises us storms and tells us not to be
terrified. How do you not be terrified when the world is literally shaking?
That's the question that haunts this passage. Jesus isn't offering an escape
plan; he's offering a way to stand firm when there is no firm ground.
This is where the Rosary becomes more than just repetitive
prayer; it becomes spiritual training. Think about the Sorrowful Mysteries:
Jesus in the Agony in the Garden, Scourged at the Pillar, Crowned with Thorns, Carrying his Cross, Crucified. Mary was watching all of this, unable to fix it, unable to stop
it. The Rosary doesn't skip over the terror; it walks through it, bead by bead,
mystery by mystery. When you pray the Rosary while meditating on Luke 21,
something clicks. You're practicing what the disciples couldn't do yet, staying
present in the fear without being consumed by it. Mary at the foot of the cross
is the embodiment of "do not be terrified." Not because she wasn't
afraid, but because she remained. She didn't understand, but she stayed. That's
the grace we're praying for when world events make us want to hide.
The deepest insight here might be the most uncomfortable
one: God allows the collapse of what we thought was permanent because our
security was never supposed to be in temples, institutions, or earthly systems.
It was supposed to be in Him. When Jesus predicts the Temple's destruction,
he's not being cruel; he's being a surgeon, cutting away our false securities
before they kill us spiritually. We build our own temples: careers,
reputations, retirement accounts, political movements, even church buildings.
And Jesus keeps whispering, "Not one stone will be left upon
another." Not because he hates what we've built, but because he loves us
too much to let us worship our constructions instead of our Creator. The birth
pangs aren't random suffering; they're the contractions that push us from one
world into another, from a kingdom built on stone to a kingdom built on the
Cornerstone that nothing can shake.
So, what do you do when you read the news, and it sounds
exactly like Luke 21? When wars rumble, when the earth itself seems angry, when
you can't tell who's telling the truth anymore? You do what Mary did: you stay.
You pray the next bead. You show up for the person in front of you. You refuse
to let terror steal your capacity to love. This isn't naive optimism, it's
battle-hardened hope. Jesus never promised we wouldn't see the stones fall. He
promised we wouldn't fall with them. That's the strange comfort of today’s
gospel reading: in a world where everything shakable will be shaken, you're
being grafted into something unshakable. The Temple fell in 70 AD, just like
Jesus said. But his words? Still here. His Church? Still here. You, reading
this, feeling the tremors in your own life? Still here. And that's not an accident;
that's a promise being kept in real time.
©2025 James Dacey, Jr., OFS
