The prophet Daniel offers us two contrasting images, speaking, in the same verse, both of anguish and of salvation: “it will be a time of anguish … in that time your people will be saved”. We are surprised: precisely the time of anguish is the time of salvation. Jesus himself, in Mark, urges us to take this paradoxical gaze. Instead of closing their eyes in the face of the tragedies of history, we must enable them to see other things: “then they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds with great power and glory”. Very often, however, we are tempted to see something else. There are those who would even claim to recognize God’s judgment in tragedies, his punishment for human sin. On the contrary, the Word announces to us that, within such upheavals, God works salvation, not punishment. Where everything seems to dissolve, God creates; where everything perishes, God saves; where everything dies, God makes new life sprout. And to shine within the darkness of history, Daniel still reminds us, will be the wise, that is, those who allow the word of God, which does not pass but remains, to inhabit their hearts, to resound on their lips, to incarnate in their life. . Through them the word of God shines and illuminates a history that seems doomed to failure, while instead it is destined for fulfillment.

Commentary by Comunità di Dumenza

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey