God's Word is something I can stand firm on! (Lk 21:29-33)
In the Gospel of Luke, we read the announcement of Christ's Second Coming, and in it the extraordinary sentence: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away" (Lk 21:33). Everything in our lives can change, everything we know and are connected to can change, and it can stop altogether. The Lord Jesus prepares us for this. When he talks about the destruction of the Temple, it is a warning to us that the forms of religiosity known to us so far may change or disappear altogether. When, in turn, he foretells a split in families because of him (cf. Mt 10:21), he warns us that family ties are also fragile. When all this escapes our feet and spills out of our hands, Jesus shows that there is something permanent and unchanging - His Word. It is the ground that will never waver under us.
It is not only permanent, but also eternal. The point is that it never ends, but that it has the nature of God within it - changeless, creative, and all-powerful. It is unchanging because God, when he speaks the Word, enters into dialogue with man and never withdraws from it, he does not regret having spoken this Word to us. It is creative because it creates a new reality in us. Dialogue with God creates a space in which only He reigns, a conversation with God creates heaven in us. With everything here on earth changing, we have a Word that takes us into eternity. We live today in a mass of words that we are unable to grasp. The Saturday / Sunday edition of any Newspaper provides more information than the man in the nineteenth century received in his entire life. We live in a world that produces an infinite amount of information. We are not able to read them, to remember or draw any conclusions. And the next day, the next Monday issue of Newspaper is waiting for us.
The Word of God is not only information, but also formation. It is all-powerful because it can change us completely in an instant. Saint Augustine could not decide for years to convert. He listened to Bishop Ambrose, read a lot, was rationally convinced of the Christian point of view, but was still stuck in his sins. In Confessions, he describes that one evening he was walking in the garden and hearing a child singing a song that he had never heard before. The chorus of this song was "Take and Read, Take and Read." Augustine had a copy of the Pauline Letters with him, so he opened it and began to read. He found an excerpt from the Letter to the Romans: “Let us live decently as in a bright day: not in revelry and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrels and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not worry too much about the body, satisfying the desires” (Rom 13: 13-14). Those two sentences changed him completely.
"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away!" With all the variability of the world there is something that a person can lean on, which is like solid ground underfoot. Anything can slip away from us, but God's Word is something I can stand firmly on. God's Word is changeless!
The Word of God is not a theory, but it is the Word that creates us. - Each of us exists. Why? -Each of us exists because God said – let it be! He wants you! You have to exist! This creation is not like God once said. This Word says – let it be now! God creates us constantly! (...) Each of us exists because God supports us in existence, because God wants us!
Until Tomorrow
fr. george