NOTES for Luk 21:28-33

It is difficult to grasp the full meaning of what Christ says. We are accustomed to thinking that heaven and earth, this whole world, the entire universe, are something real and solid that can be seen, studied, and shown to others. In other words, we are accustomed to thinking that the world exists independently of anything else and is unshakable. That is why God’s name, “He Who Is,” comes as such a revelation to us. Words, on the contrary, seem ephemeral to us: they are spoken and are gone; they fly out and fly away. “Words, words, words...”

But Jesus overturns these habitual notions of ours. The word, when it comes from God (or from the God-Man), is not ephemeral; it is more real than any material reality, because it was precisely by the word that this world was brought into existence. The world was created and therefore is not eternal; it has a beginning and an end. But God’s Word is not created; it is begotten by the Eternal God, has an eternal nature, does not disappear, and does not remain fruitless.

Therefore, if we who belong to the created world are not to perish with it but to enter eternal life, we must seek God’s word, listen closely to it, receive it, and become permeated with it, growing like Christ, the Word Incarnate.