The End Can Be The Beginning!

 

Homily for the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Nov. 16, 2025. Gospel of Luke 21:5-19. Theme: The End Can Be The Beginning!

 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus foretells the destruction of Jerusalem and its Sacred Temple about 40 years before it took place in the year 70AD.  It was a building so magnificent that people couldn’t help but marvel at it. It was the pride of Israel, a symbol of God’s presence, a structure that seemed immovable, eternal. Jesus’ words must have shocked everyone when he said: “All these things you are admiring—the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another.”

But you know, even the end of something we hold as precious can actually become the beginning of something greater and better. For example, from the ruins of Jerusalem there emerged the spread of the Christian Church. The Old Testament and the Old Law of Moses with its ineffectual Passover animal sacrifices for sin, gave way to the New Testament and the New Covenant of Christ, sealed with the atoning Blood of the cross and perpetually celebrated in the Eucharist. On the practical level how did this happen? Well, you see, heeding Jesus’ warning signs that we heard in today’s Gospel, the Jewish Christians escaped Jerusalem before its attack and collapse. Then afterwards, since there was no Jerusalem to return to, they became migrants and missionaries carrying the Light of Christ throughout the known world.  So what looked like the end of something good turned out to be the beginning of something even better.

And this wasn’t just the case for Judaism and destruction of Jerusalem. It was also the case for Catholicism and the destruction of Rome in the 7th century. Pope Gregory the First (now known as St. Gregory the Great!) saw the disintegration of society and government happening all around him. The ancient glorious Empire was gone, having been overrun by marauding barbarians from without and decimated by moral corruption from within. Law and order virtually disappeared. Its great monuments were in ruins.  Even the civil rulers abandoned the Eternal City leaving the remnant population in poverty and defenseless.  Gregory was the sole figure of authority left in the city and as such he rose to the occasion.

He refused to throw his hands up in despair and see the end as THE END.  Together with the clergy who remained with him, they put their hands and heads to work.  They took the debris and rubble and used it to rebuild. They started food distribution centers and opened up shelters for the homeless. The sick were cared for with mercy and the dead were given proper burials. Monks transformed their monasteries into schools so as to pass on the torch of education to new generations. Gregory and the Church became involved in politics and government administration because there was no one else left to do it.  And while it was a long and hard run, out of the old city’s total collapse came New Rome, which showed the indisputable ability of the Catholic Faith to be a spiritual and cultural force for good and which rebuilt and improved what we call Western Civilization.  What seemed like the end of something wonderful actually turned out to be the beginning of something greater and better.

This same dynamic of ending and beginning happens in our own lives. We all have a figurative “temple” or an “empire” that we cherish as sacred and that we cling to for security.  It could be a relationship, a career, our health or our wealth. Such things that seem solid and we think we can count on…things that we place our hopes in and deem unshakable can fall apart and come crumbling down like the Jerusalem Temple or the Roman Empire. And when this happens we are faced with the same choices as those Jewish Christians of Jerusalem or Pope Gregory and his clergy.  Will we give in to despondency and despair over what is ending? Or will we look to see the possibility of something better and greater beginning?  

We will each have to face this kind of a situation at some point in our lives and many of us have most likely already done so.  Christianity is not an escape from life’s troubles but it gives us the opportunity to walk through them with Christ at our side.  It reminds us that even if we are powerless in a particular situation we are never helpless. With Christ who strengthens us we can begin again and like Pope St. Gregory the Great, start laying the foundations for something better and greater that will be built up out of the rubble that now lies before us. 

What does that mean? It means that nothing can take away the hope and the help that God promises us. The world can shake, but our foundation is Christ. The world can threaten, but our trust is secure in Him. Even when everything else falls, God holds us up. The sure hope we have that the ending of one thing can become the beginning of something better rests upon the fact that the life-giving and life-changing power of our Risen Lord has not been depleted over the past 2,000 years. It is inexhaustible and available in every generation and to any one who surrenders their life to him. 

The message of Jesus today is not meant to frighten us. It is meant to free us. If we stand on Christ, we can walk through anything. If we trust Christ, we can survive anything. If we cling to Christ, we will endure through everything. A better future does not belong to those who keep looking back and weeping over what once was.  It belongs to those who move forward with confidence in God, who depend upon his Providence for their daily needs, and who seek first his Kingdom above all things.