NOTES for Mar 13:31-14:2
Why does Jesus not answer such a burning question about times and dates? Does God really deliberately hide such an important fact from people? Indeed, if only we knew the exact date of the coming triumph of the Kingdom... Still, it is not so simple to say unambiguously what any of us would do in that case. One cannot even be sure that everyone would take such a revelation seriously. And yet, as is well known, to be forewarned is to be forearmed, and each person decides for himself how to respond to a warning. In any case, for those who take spiritual life seriously, the situation would become noticeably simpler: they would not have to remain in a state of continuous spiritual, and perhaps not only spiritual, tension, expecting every day the main event of their life. Besides, Jesus Himself says that even He does not know the time of His own return. Why is this so? Maybe the point is not that something is being hidden from us, but that the time has not been fixed? After all, the history of the Kingdom is, above all, the history of those who live in it and bear witness to it, the history of Christian righteousness, which is determined not only by God's will but also by the choice of those people whom God calls. And then it inevitably turns out that the time of the Messiah's return and the triumph of the Kingdom depends not only on God, but also on us.