GOD ALONE IS ETERNAL
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
November 17, 2019
Many years
ago when I was traveling in S. Mexico I had the opportunity to visit a site
that the locals there call simply, “Las Ruinas” or “The Ruins.” It is in a
place called Palenque, and it is a whole city of ancient Mayan Indian temples
and palaces and statues and carvings and inscriptions and art. The culture
there flourished for about 1,000 years until about the year 800 AD. At that
time it abruptly died out, and even today nobody is certain exactly why that
happened, or how. The excavated site today features many intact buildings from
1,500 years ago. I’d guess the size of the place is about the size of
Valleyfair in Shakopee, but most archaeologists believe that more than 90% of
Las Ruinas remains undiscovered. And the reason for that is that all the rest
of that place has been reclaimed by a tropical forest and is buried
underground. Hundreds of years went by between the abandonment of Las Ruinas
and the time its remains were found.
We here in
MN, with a few Native American exceptions, are simply incapable of thinking in
units of time and history like that. I know I can’t. The United States has been
a country for 243 years, and we think of that as fairly impressive. That’s
roughly a quarter of the time that the Mayans held forth at Palenque.
By modern
standards 243 years seems pretty sturdy, and maybe we’ll live forever as a
nation. I suppose the Mayans thought so too, and the Romans of the Empire in
Jesus’ day. Everybody either was or is wrong about that, and we can either come
to terms with that or perish while fooling ourselves.
In that
respect we might be better and more honest human beings and Christians if we
were required to live in the shadow of ruins and relics, as most humans do. The
Egyptian’s have their pyramids and palaces. The Greek’s have the Acropolis. The Italian’s have the Colosseum. The
British have Stonehenge. The Jordanian’s have Petra.
And the
Israeli’s have the Temple of King Herod, right in the middle of Jerusalem. Of
course it’s not there anymore—just the massive foundation stones. It hasn’t
been there since a few decades after Jesus died and rose, but the people and
the king thought they had a shrine that would live forever. It was Jesus
himself who informed them that it was not so, and that it would never be so,
and that they could either get used to it or die in their ignorance. It is not
a message that was intended only for long-ago people, and still we struggle to
believe and accept it. On June 30th of this year I remember standing
right here at Mass and reminding us all that Jesus, in the gospel of Luke, was
beginning his long, long twelve chapter journey from Galilee to Jerusalem—one
that would not end until November 17th.
Well here we
are. And through all of his encounters and teachings and ministry along the way
there has been at least one incessant drumbeat to his message: We don’t save
ourselves. God does. We don’t create our own eternity. God does. We don’t live
forever apart from God. Nor do our families or our communities or our nation.
Without reference to God it will all come crashing down.
In today’s
gospel Jesus points to what every pious Jew in Israel would have regarded as
the most stable, enduring, reliable, beautiful institution imaginable—the
temple of Jerusalem…the symbol of everything about their religion that endures.
And even though this was the third one to be built, the people simply couldn’t
get it that this one too would fall—and soon. And so it did, never to rise
again.
Jesus’
purpose in his words today is not intended to scare us or to depress us. Quite
the opposite—it’s to warn us away from false hope, born of pride, that will
fail us in the end. Nothing that is merely of this world will remain standing
in the end. Not our dynasties or our buildings, not our reputations or our
wealth, not even our most treasured religious icons. And it will all be okay—if
we can simply come to peace with who is God and who is not.
Jesus
mentions a lot of the most terrifying things that can happen to people—natural
disasters, frightening cosmic signs, wars and terror, family discord,
imprisonment, injustice, and even death. But it will all be within God’s power
to accompany us if we would only not buy in to the false idea that we can fix
it all by ourselves. We do what we can, and accept the responsibilities that
are rightfully ours now in virtue of our faith and baptism. But in the end we
throw ourselves upon the compassion and mercy and power of God, to do for
eternity what we can never do alone.
We don’t
have to live forever, and neither do our allegiances and ideologies. Not here
anyways. That ought to be the most consoling news of all, not a threat. Let
“Las Ruinas” speak to us about both the amazing capabilities of human beings
and the God in whom alone we can and must place our final trust. The new world
is up ahead, and it will be grounded in God—not us.
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