Friday in the 32nd Week of Ordinary Time, November 13, 2020

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.”

We are all holding out here in the rectory.  Fr. Guillermo, who was just ordained a few months ago, is doing all the weddings, funerals, and Last Rites visits.  Since he was not here when one of us was exposed to the COVID, he can carry on.  I spent a good part of the day reading the Gospel of Matthew in the Greek, carefully examining the vocabulary and grammar. 

“As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man.”  The Lord Jesus tells us plainly that people will live as they always have up until the very end: “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage.”  The people of Noah’s time did this in spite of the fact that signs pointed to some imminent catastrophe.  The most important sign was that Noah, the one just man alive, living in a way very distinct from that of his neighbors due to his piety, was building an enormous vessel.  Undoubtedly, people asked him what he was doing.  The Lord, who had commanded the building of the vessel in very specific terms, had not forbidden him from speaking about it, and so we can imagine him explaining that he was preparing for a great storm.  Perhaps some of his neighbors were impressed by the scale of his undertaking, and perhaps some were amused by it.  Critically, what Noah told them made no difference in their behavior.

In the case of Sodom, the inhabitants must have understood the wickedness of their behavior, for it cried to heaven for justice.  As a result of Abraham’s intercession for them with God, who was minded to destroy the city, if ten just men were found within it, it would not be destroyed. However, not even that many just men dwelt in it.  Life in Sodom continued as normal — “they were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building” — up to the end.  Their own wickedness was the sign that retribution was coming.

“So it will be on the day the Son of Man is revealed.”  If we do not see the signs, it is because we are not looking, or that we are in denial.  We have this very moment to repent of our sins, not any other.  And we must repent st once because when the Lord comes, it will not be a gradual event but a sudden one that will put an irrevocable end to the business we are engaged in: “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.”  Our old life is over at that point.  St. Thomas Aquinas considers the question of the condition of the people who are still alive when the Lord comes again.  He points out that all humans must die, so what about these?  He answers that at the moment the Lord comes, everyone alive at that time will die and then in the next moment he raised up along with all the dead.

The Lord next offers various details about this time which is to come.  He admonishes us to “Remember the wife of Lot.”  One moment she was alive and on her way to safety; the next, she disobeyed the commandment given by the angels, and was no more.  Up until the very last moment of our life we can throw away our salvation with one mortal sin.  “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it.”  That is, if we somehow intuit our impending death and try to make a deal with the devil to save ourselves, we will die anyway and be received into hell by the devil.  Faced with the prospect of death, many people act in this way.  “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.”  It is intriguing that the two men in one bed are said to be “people”, but the two persons grinding meal together are allowed to be “women” by the translator.  In this passage, the Lord emphasizes again the abruptness of his coming and its unexpectedness of the moment.  It is as if to say, Blink, and he is here.  Certain Protestants interpret this line as referring to “the rapture”, an idea that is actually only a little more than a hundred years old, but they are much mistaken.  To believe in “the rapture” one must reject Matthew 24-25 as well as everything else the Lord says about his Second Coming, and what the Church has taught consistently for two thousand years.  

“Where, Lord?”  The disciples want to know where to look for the Lord when he comes.  He does not provide a geographical answer, but a more meaningful one: “Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather.”  In order to understand what the Lord means, we must first translate this verse correctly, for an egregious error occurs in this translation.  That is, the birds in question are not “vultures” but “eagles”.  The two Greek words are as unlike as the two English words.  From the earliest times, there was never any question of any other kind of bird.  The mistake is a modern one and seems to arise first in the 1970 New American translation of the Bible.  Possibly some translator saw the Greek word for “body” and decided this word meant “corpse”, which it does not.  Then, this person decided, the Greek word for “eagles” is a mistake: it should be “vultures”.  This is very irresponsible work.  The Lord instead is saying, Where the (living) body is, there also the eagles will gather.  So what does this mean?  The Fathers, such as St. Ambrose, understand this “body” to be the Body of the Lord, and the “eagles” as the souls of the just.  St. Ambrose understands the “eagles” as the righteous because they soar high, leave behind the lower things of the world, and live for a great length of time, implying immortality.  He describes the Body of the Lord as surrounded by the “eagles” Joseph of Arimithea, the holy women, and the Apostles.  Ambrose also speaks of those who believe that the Son of God put on human flesh as  “eagles”, aloft through the wings — the gift of faith — of the Holy Spirit.

Let us also be “eagles”, alert for the coming of the Lord, and eager to greet him when he comes.