In this penultimate Sunday in Ordinary Time, our readings continue to focus on the final days of the world, our own death, Final Judgment and the Second Coming (Parousia) of Jesus in glory. Apocalyptic readings, however, are not meant to sow fear. They are meant to encourage dispirited people by proclaiming that God is in control of history and that punishment of the wicked will come about by God’s doing, thus urging all to repentance. They are also meant to encourage believers to remain faithful through the coming ordeals. Finally, they are meant to inspire believers to derive all the spiritual good God offers them through life’s inevitable suffering.

Our first reading is an example. When Judah returned from exile in Babylon, the people and their leaders showed a tendency, which they had absorbed from their long contact with the pagans, to lead loose moral lives. The religious leaders and priests also failed to correct them for their abuses. The Lord God, through the prophet Malachi, warns that the day of the Lord is coming shortly, and that He has taken note of the goodness of those who fear Him and will have compassion on them in the Day of His coming. It will be a day of healing for the righteous, but a day of fiery punishment for the sinful, coming like a blazing oven, setting them on fire, and “leaving them neither root nor branch.”

Our Gospel reading is a lot more historically concrete. “While some people were speaking about how the Temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings, Jesus said, “All that you see here – the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.” This, of course, came as a great shock, and almost a blasphemy to the hearers. It sounded like an insult to God. Yet within forty years, the prediction of Jesus was largely fulfilled. The Temple, originally built by Solomon (960 BC), rebuilt by Zerubbabel and the returning exiles (536-516 BC), and enlarged by Herod the Great (20 BC – 64 AD), was destroyed in 70 AD in the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans. In that siege, people perished, many were carried into captivity, and the Temple and the city of Jerusalem were demolished by fire.

Going through the readings this weekend, it is tempting to get stuck in the prediction of calamities, divisions and persecutions. But really, what Jesus wants us to focus on is what he says in the end: “By your perseverance, you will secure your lives.” Jesus’ purpose is to invite us to persevere in faith. Perseverance does not only mean enduring the pains of persecution while keeping the faith. It is also seen in how we strive to be faithful to God’s will, in how we live a life of unconditional mercy for others, in how conscious we are of the demands of justice in our encounter with people, and in how we make concrete the great commandments of love of God and of neighbor.

“… but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.” Jesus sounds so sure and definitive, for indeed he is. In the midst of everything that will happen, not a hair on the heads of those who persevere will be destroyed. It is a guarantee, that contrary to what appears to be, God remains firmly in control and His saving purpose will certainly triumph.