This reflection is based on Luke 21:25-36 for the First Sunday of Advent.
The words that our Lord speaks to his disciples in today’s Gospel reading are chilling; they are disturbingly applicable to our world. This talk about “signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars” may well have been a long-issued warning about the vengeance of nature that we are already beginning to experience in the form of climate change. We know what the Lord means when he speaks of the “dismay of nations,” for what can better describe our shock and helplessness at the escalation of meaningless violence all over the world?