Daily Reflection Friday of the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Today’s passage from Luke 21 about the second coming of Jesus presents us with a problem. Rather than discuss what Jesus is saying here today in Luke (basically, stay awake!), I’ll discuss this problem. No original manuscripts of any of the four gospel accounts have survived in any way. The earliest copies we have of what we call the gospel of Luke are third generation copies that often vary considerably from each other, the earliest coming from late in the second Century and others as late as the fourth Century. Although it has traditionally been called the gospel according to Luke, virtually no serious scholar today believes that it is the Luke of Acts who was a companion of the Apostle Paul. Basically, like all the gospel accounts, we do not know the actual author who is lost to history. Most scholars estimate that it was originally written somewhere between 80 and 110 A.D. Its sources, which include the sources of the gospel of Mark and a hypothesized collection of sayings of Jesus called the “Q Source,” conjectured as a collection of various oral histories of Jesus that were floating around ancient Israel (all originating from the many who met Jesus or were healed by him), are all unknown. All of this is ultimately scholarly speculation. The origin of the four Gospel accounts remains a complete mystery.

However, if those origin theories are correct, we have the problem that the “Eschatological” (meaning that they refer to the “End Times”) passages of Luke (most of Luke 21 from which today’s passage comes) incorporate references to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D. that are presented as a prophesy of Jesus but had actually already happened by the time Luke was written. Thus, we are forced to ask, did the evangelist simply attribute these prophesies to Jesus even if the Lord never actually said them? We just cannot know.

We are thus confronted with the very great problem of authenticity in the gospels. Did Jesus actually say everything the gospel accounts have him saying? We must make a decision here. We must decide to believe what the Gospel accounts tell us, or not. The key to all of this is to understand that the Gospel accounts (only four have been recognized by the Church but there are other accounts that are not recognized, such as the so-called “Gnostic gospels” all written much later) are not what we today would call biography. Details or what we would call facts are not what is important to the unknown evangelists. What they wrote are spiritual and theological attempts to share what is nothing less than the great mystery of the Incarnation. The question then, did this actually happen, isn’t really one we can ask in many cases. Our question is what do the gospels mean? What are they telling us? This becomes very clear in two areas of the gospels, the Infancy Narratives of Matthew and Luke, and the post resurrection accounts of all four gospels. Neither Matthew nor Luke agree on much of anything in their two very different infancy narratives (the two “genealogies” of Jesus contained in each account agree on nothing, not even who Joseph’s father was). All four gospel accounts of early Sunday morning after the resurrection differ in virtually all details (Mary Magdalene alone is in all accounts but in very different ways). 

We must be aware that the gospels are all attempting to tell us about something that is entirely unique in history and is completely based on faith. It is about something that never happened before and never will again and something that is outside of all of our human experience and understanding, the Word made flesh. We are dealing with the greatest mystery of faith, the Lord Jesus Christ born of Mary but Son of God, “the one who has come into the world.”  No text can ever hope to fully explain that or even come close. So the gospels don’t even try. They are not attempts to “prove” anything or give facts about Jesus’ life. They are not histories. They are witnesses to something that is radically different from all other human experiences, Emmanuel, or God With Us.

The question, therefore, is not, “did this actually happen,” but rather, what does this mean for us spiritually? There is a great truth, the greatest of all truths, at the heart of the gospel accounts that goes far beyond mere facts. For the gospels are seeking to answer Jesus’ question to his Apostles, “And you, who do you say that I am?” That is a question we all must answer for ourselves. The gospels help us to answer it. That answer is forever ongoing and lies outside of all other human answers. It is entirely from above. The gospels give us the only account we have of Jesus’ life. But it is a life unlike any other in that facts alone cannot possibly explain it. Our faith in Jesus and in the Gospel accounts that are all we have of his life, does not lie in the details but in how we answer Jesus’ question. That asks us to put all our faith and hope in the person the gospels reveal to us, a person unlike any other who has ever lived. The one human being upon whom the entire world, past, present and to come, depends upon completely. It is he alone in whom we put all our faith. The Gospels show us the way. But they are not the way, for that is Jesus alone and ultimately it is Jesus alone who reveals himself to the hearts of those who believe what the gospels are really proclaiming, Jesus Christ is Lord.