Friday in the 32nd Week of Ordinary Time, November 17, 2023

Luke 17, 26-37

Jesus said to his disciples: “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man; they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Similarly, as it was in the days of Lot: they were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building; on the day when Lot left Sodom, fire and brimstone rained from the sky to destroy them all. So it will be on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, someone who is on the housetop and whose belongings are in the house must not go down to get them, and likewise one in the field must not return to what was left behind. Remember the wife of Lot. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it. I tell you, on that night there will be two people in one bed; one will be taken, the other left. And there will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken, the other left.” They said to him in reply, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather.”

“As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man.”  The Lord Jesus continues to explain to the Pharisees what will happen at the end of the world.  They had asked him when he thought the Kingdom of God would come.  He directed them to an accurate understanding of what the Kingdom of God meant, proving that it was not what they were expecting through their faulty interpretation of the Scriptures, but that it involved the suffering and Death of the Son of Man.  At this point in his answer to them, Jesus describes certain aspects of his second coming, when he comes in glory to judge the living and the dead.  He emphasizes the suddenness of his coming: “They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.”  They went on with their lives with the expectation that the future would be as the past and the present.  Likewise, the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, who had steeped their lives in sin.

“So it will be on the day the Son of Man is revealed.”  That is, when he comes again, appearing in the sky: “You shall see the heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man” (John 1, 51).  “On that day, someone who is on the housetop and whose belongings are in the house must not go down to get them, and likewise one in the field must not return to what was left behind.”  At the moment the Lord returns — in that very instant — life on earth is over.  It is now the time of judgment.  There will be no return to our former lives in order to repent or do perform good deeds.  The angels will reunite the souls of the dead with their bodies, which the angels have reconstituted, and all will be brought before the throne of judgment.  “Remember the wife of Lot.”  The author or the Book of Wisdom comments: “[Wisdom] delivered the just man, who fled from the wicked that were perishing, when the fire came down upon cities of the plain: whose land, for a testimony of their wickedness, is desolate, and smokes to this day, and the trees bear fruits that do not ripen, and a standing pillar of salt is a monument of an unbelieving soul” (Wisdom 10, 6-7).  In other words, wife’s Lot was turned into a pillar of salt for her lack of faith.  Returning to the house to collect one’s belongings is a sign of lack of faith as well, as though we do not need the help of Jesus but we can help ourselves.   These seek to save their lives through their own means.

“One will be taken, the other left.”  Those who believe in the “rapture” think that this verse supports their doctrine but it does not.  The Lord is explaining the suddenness of his coming, the quickness of the resurrection of the dead, and the judgment, and the speediness of reward and punishment: “We shall all indeed rise again: but we shall not all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet” (1 Corinthians 15, 51-52).  Indeed, at the end of the world, “there shall be no more time” (Revelation 10, 6).

“Where, Lord?”  The Pharisees, having asked the Lord when the Kingdom of God would arrive, now ask where the second coming, which they still think of as the coming of the Son of Man to restore Israel, will take place, though they might not understand what they are asking.  “Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather.”  The lectionary reading and most English translations of the Scriptures mistranslate the Greek aetoi as “vultures”.  The Greek word means “eagles”.  The Greek language has another distinctly different word for “vultures”.  Now, following St. Albert the Great, we should understand these “eagles” as the saints on account of the sharpness of their spiritual vision and their understanding of the truth.  He cites Job 29, 29-30 in aid of understanding the verse: “[The eagle] looks for the prey, and her eyes behold afar off.  Her young ones shall suck up blood: and wheresoever the carcass shall be, she is immediately there.”  And so the saints, seeing the coming of Jesus Christ, Body and Soul, in glory, hasten to meet him.  They eagerly assemble to the One who has given his Body and Blood to them for their nourishment.  Albert also mentions the story of the rebirth of the eagle, which was taken as fact during the Middle Ages: when an eagle grows old, it was thought, it ascends to a high, craggy place on a mountain and begins its process of renewal by breaking off its old beak to let a new one grow in its place, and then tears out its talons with its new beak so that new ones may grow, and then plucks out its old feathers so that new ones can grow in their place.  The saint, understood as an eagle in this way, renews himself unto eternal life by ascending on high through the lofty teachings of Jesus Christ.