“While some people were speaking about how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings…” (Lk 21,5)

While visiting Ireland years ago, I saw a pile of rubble and a few stone columns standing off in the distance in the middle of a grassy field.  I was told that this had been the site of an ancient monastery.  In my mind and heart I pictured that monastery in its days of glory when countless monks had walked its halls heading to the choir for prayer and offering their daily work as a sacrifice to the Lord.  I was certain that the monks in those days had no idea that what they had built would one day be reduced to a pile of stones.  I am sure that they had a sense that there was something of the eternal that dwelt with them in that place.  In my heart I felt that there had once been many beautiful things that had adorned that house of prayer.

How simple it is for pretty, material things to seize our attention and distract us from deeper realities.  We live in a world that values appearances over substance, the material over the spiritual, the imminent over the transcendent and the temporal over the eternal.  The world of today is very much characterized by a secularism.  The word “secularism” derives from the Latin word, saeculum, which indicates to us “the present age” and is pretty much synonymous with temporality.  In a secularized world, all of reality is reduced to what is seen, what is present and what we can know.  There are few people today that concern themselves with the eternal or the sacred and the deeper and perhaps transcendent meaning of things and events shrouded in mystery.  The meaning and importance of things is pretty much reduced today to their usefulness to us.  Most people have no use for the eternal and sacred in our secularized world today.

In the time of Jesus, the sublime beauty of the temple was not to be found in the costly stones or votive offerings that adorned its facade but rather, in the glory of God, the kabod that signified the divine presence of the Lord dwelling in the midst of his people.  The temple of the Lord signified a relationship of God with his people, a very personal relationship that was meant to be characterized by prayer and worship.  Thus, “my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” (Is 56,7)  Jesus quite passionately drives out of the temple those who have made the temple, and thus the relationship with God, into a business transaction.  The “costly” stones and the votive offerings were also signs that the temple and the relationship of the people with God had turned into a transaction of business, a mercenary affair.  The temple worship had devolved into a type of idolatry involving temporal and material exchange.  As people stood before the temple marveling at the aesthetical adornment of the building they were oblivious to the eternal presence of the kabod of the Lord in the incarnate person of Jesus who stood near to them and who carried within the temple of his body the glory of the Lord.  As Jesus withdraws from the temple we have a sense that the glory of the Lord is withdrawing from the temple and from Jerusalem as in the vision of Ezekiel the prophet, “Then the glory of the Lord left the threshold of the temple and rested upon the cherubim.  These lifted their wings and I saw them rise from the earth, the wheels rising along with them.  They stood at the entrance of the eastern gate of the Lord’s house, and the glory of the God of Israel was up above them.  Then the cherubim lifted their wings, and the wheels went along with them, while up above them was the glory of the God of Israel.  And the glory of the Lord rose from the city and took a stand on the mountain which is to the east of the city.” (Ez 10,18-23)  When the eternal departs, all that remains is subject to ruin in the temporal realm.  “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.” (Lk 21,6)  Jesus predicts the destruction of the temple just as he had lamented the destruction of Jerusalem earlier upon his entrance into the holy city, “They will smash you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another within you…” (Lk 19,44)  All this happens because “you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” (Lk 19,44)

In this last week of the liturgical year, the scripture readings draw our attention to the eternal.  The eschatological nature of the readings reminds us that we should not be attached to temporal realities, “For the world in its present form is passing away.” (1Cor 7,31)  Our minds and hearts should always be set on the eternal life that has been promised to us and every decision we make should be made in light of its eternal consequences.  “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal.  But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” (Mt 6,19-21)  The things of this earth are all passing away and have very little real value.  The eternal treasures of heaven and the gift of eternal life, the word of the Lord and the promises of God, these things will not pass away but will endure forever.  In the light of the eternal, even suffering takes on a new perspective, as St. Paul affirms, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.” (Rom 8,18)

The disciples question Jesus about a visible sign of the end times:  “What sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?” (Lk 21,7)  Jesus points to a lot of visible and dramatic events that happen in our world but then he says that it will be none of those.  It is reminiscent for me of the time that Elijah stood on the mountain of the Lord at Horeb and waited for the Lord to pass by.  The Lord was not in a great dramatic or temporal event but he revealed his presence in a tiny whispering sound. (1Kgs 19,11-13)  In prayer we can enter into the eternal and encounter the presence and glory of the Lord.  “Be still and know that I am God!” (Ps 46,11)  It is in the eternal that we will always find in a hidden manner the answers to the mystery of our lives.

If one of those monks of old would look upon the pile of rubble that was at one time a holy and sacred house of prayer, he would smile a little smile, with a little gleam in his eye, and shrug his shoulders a bit, as he would remind me that the eternal was never in the stones or beautiful adornments of the monastery but in the songs and chants of vigils, lauds, vespers and complines that were lifted up each day to the Lord.  The eternal glory of the Lord was revealed in the true presence of Jesus, in the Body of Christ, at the holy mass that was celebrated each day.  The eternal was carried in the hearts and souls of each monk as the angels led them into the eternal halls of the house of the Father.  There the living stones of the monks were foundation stones of the new and eternal city in heaven.  If you are quiet enough you might still hear them chanting their prayers.