Mark 13:24-32            Persevere to the end

We have come to the end of our reading of Mark for this Liturgical Year and we find ourselves where we began, in Mark chapter 13, reading “Jesus’ Apocalyptic Discourse”.  We associate ‘apocalyptic’ with doomsday predictions, but the word itself simply means ‘revelation’.  Here, Jesus is the revealer of things to come and, for the early Christians, who expected the return of the ‘Son of Man’ imminently, this highly symbolic literature brought great hope.  It was considered to be ‘the literature of the dispossessed’ because it was written for a community who were experiencing persecution and who had little chance of turning their situation around.

During times of serious upheaval in our lives it can seem like ‘the sun darkens, and the noon loses its brightness’.  One thing that is guaranteed in life is change, nothing is for ever, all things are temporary, even our very bodies.  When things we thought were eternal fall apart, it is a shock to the system, yet somehow, we survive.  As we move through various paradigm shifts in our Church, in politics, in our personal lives, we realise that everything is in a state of flux, ancient orders pass away and we enter into a new phase.  A text like this urges total confidence in God’s plan and a reassurance that God would fulfil the promise made to God’s people; this text urges Mark’s community and us to ‘know that he is near’.  When we learn deep lessons in times of struggle; we certainly do not come out the other side unchanged.

Throughout Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has been the herald of God’s Kingdom, but this work is yet to come to fulfilment.  As we witness upheaval in our lives and in our world, Jesus urges us to trust in God’s constant love for us, to keep watch for those signs of hope – the supple branches and buds – that point us towards restoration and help us to endure to the end.   © Triona Doherty & Jane Mellet, 2023.  The Deep End: A Journey with the Sunday Gospels in the Year of Mark.  (Dublin: Messenger Publications 2023).

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‘Life is not a piece of tragic fiction, in which at the end of the reading we all get up and go out for drinks.  All of us are actors in a great unfolding drama, and until we dig deep, there is no great performances.  How each of us carries out our role will affect the end of the play.  –  Marianne Williamson