November 25, 2025
Tuesday of the Thirty-fourth
Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 504
Reading
1
Daniel said to
Nebuchadnezzar:
"In your vision, O king, you saw a statue,
very large and exceedingly bright,
terrifying in appearance as it stood before you.
The head of the statue was pure gold,
its chest and arms were silver,
its belly and thighs bronze, the legs iron,
its feet partly iron and partly tile.
While you looked at the statue,
a stone which was hewn from a mountain
without a hand being put to it,
struck its iron and tile feet, breaking them in pieces.
The iron, tile, bronze, silver, and gold all crumbled at once,
fine as the chaff on the threshing floor in summer,
and the wind blew them away without leaving a trace.
But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain
and filled the whole earth.
"This was the dream;
the interpretation we shall also give in the king's presence.
You, O king, are the king of kings;
to you the God of heaven
has given dominion and strength, power and glory;
men, wild beasts, and birds of the air, wherever they may dwell,
he has handed over to you, making you ruler over them all;
you are the head of gold.
Another kingdom shall take your place, inferior to yours,
then a third kingdom, of bronze,
which shall rule over the whole earth.
There shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron;
it shall break in pieces and subdue all these others,
just as iron breaks in pieces and crushes everything else.
The feet and toes you saw, partly of potter's tile and partly of iron,
mean that it shall be a divided kingdom,
but yet have some of the hardness of iron.
As you saw the iron mixed with clay tile,
and the toes partly iron and partly tile,
the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile.
The iron mixed with clay tile
means that they shall seal their alliances by intermarriage,
but they shall not stay united, any more than iron mixes with clay.
In the lifetime of those kings
the God of heaven will set up a kingdom
that shall never be destroyed or delivered up to another people;
rather, it shall break in pieces all these kingdoms
and put an end to them, and it shall stand forever.
That is the meaning of the stone you saw hewn from the mountain
without a hand being put to it,
which broke in pieces the tile, iron, bronze, silver, and gold.
The great God has revealed to the king what shall be in the future;
this is exactly what you dreamed, and its meaning is sure."
Responsorial
Psalm
R. (59b) Give
glory and eternal praise to him.
"Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord,
praise and exalt him above all forever."
R. Give glory and eternal praise to him.
"Angels of the Lord, bless the Lord,
praise and exalt him above all forever."
R. Give glory and eternal praise to him.
"You heavens, bless the Lord,
praise and exalt him above all forever."
R. Give glory and eternal praise to him.
"All you waters above the heavens, bless the Lord,
praise and exalt him above all forever."
R. Give glory and eternal praise to him.
"All you hosts of the Lord, bless the Lord;
praise and exalt him above all forever."
R. Give glory and eternal praise to him.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia,
alleluia.
Remain faithful until death,
And I will give you the crown of life.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
While some people
were speaking about
how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings,
Jesus said, "All that you see here–
the days will come when there will not be left
a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down."
Then they asked him,
"Teacher, when will this happen?
And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?"
He answered,
"See that you not be deceived,
for many will come in my name, saying,
'I am he,' and 'The time has come.'
Do not follow them!
When you hear of wars and insurrections,
do not be terrified; for such things must happen first,
but it will not immediately be the end."
Then he said to them,
"Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues
from place to place;
and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky."
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/112525.cfm
Commentary on Daniel
2:31-45
Daniel, we saw in yesterday’s reading, had been blessed with
a divine gift for interpreting dreams. King Nebuchadnezzar has had a series of
dreams, but he cannot remember their contents and this greatly disturbed him.
He calls in all his wise men and astrologers to interpret them. Naturally,
without being told the contents, they cannot do so, although they apparently go
into all kinds of rambling disquisitions to cover their ignorance. The king
goes into a rage and wants them all executed. Daniel and his companions are
also to be given the same fate.
Daniel then approaches the king’s chief executioner to ask
the king to hold off the executions (in which he would also be involved)
because he wants the opportunity to interpret the king’s dreams. He is then brought
into the presence of Nebuchadnezzar, who asks if Daniel can interpret his
dreams. The young man says that all the wise men and soothsayers in the kingdom
did not know how to interpret the dreams, but:
…there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries…
(Dan 2:28)
He is the one who, through Daniel, will tell the king what
is going to happen in the final days.
Daniel then begins his interpretation. He knows that the
king is concerned about the future. It has been revealed to Daniel, not because
he is wiser than anyone else, but so that the king can learn the meaning of his
dream and to understand his innermost thoughts.
It is at this point that today’s reading begins, with a
description of the contents of the dream and the meaning of its symbols. This,
says Daniel, is what the king saw:
…a great statue. That statue was huge, its brilliance
extraordinary; it was standing before you, and its appearance was frightening.
The head of that statue was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its
midsection and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron; its feet partly of iron and
partly of clay.
As the king watched in his dream, a stone broke away,
untouched by any human hand. This stone struck the feet of iron and clay and
shattered them. Then all the rest of the statue collapsed and broke into fine
pieces:
…and became like the chaff of the summer threshing
floors, and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be
found.
On the other hand:
…the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain
and filled the whole earth.
Now, says Daniel, comes the interpretation of the dream.
First, about Nebuchadnezzar himself, God has given him
sovereignty, power, strength and honour. Daniel pointedly notes that the source
of the king’s power is God and not the divine nature which Nebuchadnezzar
claims for himself. In addition, all human life and all other life have been
entrusted to his rule. He is the head of gold in the dream.
After him will come another kingdom, of silver, which will
not be as great as Nebuchadnezzar’s, followed by a third of bronze, which will
rule the whole world.
Then there will be a fourth:
…strong as iron; just as iron crushes and smashes
everything…
And, like iron, it will crush and break all earlier
kingdoms.
The feet—part iron and part clay—represent a kingdom that
will split in two, but will maintain some of the strength of iron: in other
words, the kingdom will be partly hard and partly brittle. And just as the feet
are a combination of earth and clay, so the two will be “mix[ed] with one
another in marriage”. But they will not hold together, any more than iron and
clay can.
Then it is that God will set up a kingdom never to be
destroyed, a kingdom which will not pass into the hands of another race. On the
contrary, it will shatter and absorb all the previous kingdoms and last
forever. This is symbolised by the stone, untouched by human hand, which broke
away and reduced all the metals to powder.
Daniel concludes:
The great God has informed the king what shall be
hereafter. The dream is certain and its interpretation trustworthy.
For us, at this distance in time, the interpretation itself
needs some further elucidation. The references are to actual historical dynasties
which succeeded one another.
The gold head represents the Neo-Babylonian empire; the
silver chest and arms, the Median empire; the bronze belly and thighs, the
Persian empire; and the iron legs, the Greek empire established by Alexander
the Great (about 330 BC).
The iron will be the strongest, the kingdom of Philip of
Macedon and his famous son, Alexander (the Great), and will overcome all
others. With his death, Alexander’s kingdom divides, but cannot reunite because
the iron and clay of the feet will not blend. After Alexander’s death, his
empire was divided among his generals. The two resulting kingdoms, which most
affected the Jews, were the dynasty of the Ptolemies in Egypt, and that of the
Seleucids in Syria, who tried in vain by war and through intermarriage (“mix
with one another in marriage”) to restore the unity of Alexander’s empire.
The diminishing value of the metals from gold to silver to
bronze to iron represents the decreasing power and grandeur of the rulers of
the successive empires, from the absolute despotism of Nebuchadnezzar to the
relatively democratic system of the Greeks. The metals also symbolise a growing
degree of toughness and endurance, with each successive empire lasting longer
than the preceding one.
Last of all comes the messianic kingdom. The stone hewn from
the mountain is the messianic kingdom awaited by the Jews. This is an
apocalyptic prediction, about which Daniel does not yet know the way in which
it will be realised. He sees it still as something exclusively Jewish (“nor
shall this kingdom be left to another people”).
But with the coming of Jesus, the form of the prediction
becomes clear. He is the stone which breaks away from the mountain. He is the
Messiah come to establish the everlasting Kingdom of God, very different from
the preceding empires which have now all been reduced to dust and blown away
like chaff. The empires of the earth collapse and give place to a new kingdom
which, being founded by God, is everlasting—the Kingdom of God. Jesus will
later refer to himself as the cornerstone:
…the stone that was rejected by you, the builders;
it has become the cornerstone. (Acts 4:11)
The cornerstone formerly rejected as the foundation stone is
a clear allusion to the stone which breaks away from the mountain and crushes
him on whom it falls.
Our reading ends with Daniel’s interpretation, but we may as
well add in the conclusion of this narrative. In spite of the disturbing nature
of the interpretation as far as Nebuchadnezzar is concerned, he is deeply moved
and uncharacteristically falls prostrate before Daniel as to a god. He
acknowledges the greatness of Daniel’s God:
Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings and a
revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery! (Dan
2:47)
It will not be the last time the king acknowledges the God
of Israel.
Daniel is then rewarded by being made governor of the whole
province of Babylon and chief sage of the kingdom and given many gifts.
However, Daniel entrusts the running of the province to his three companions
while he remains in attendance on the king.
This vision and its interpretation, of course, is not just a
historical narrative. It is a special message of hope for a people who are
under the cruel persecution of the tyrannical King Antiochus, about whom we
were reading last week in the books of the Maccabees.
And history confirms that no dynasty, no political power,
lasts for ever. In the not too distant past, we have seen the collapse of
powerful (and very anti-Christian) empires—German Nazism and Italian Fascism
and Soviet Communism. The millions of peoples who suffered under these regimes
must have felt at times very much like the Jews under Antiochus. Yet, all these
regimes collapsed—and much more rapidly than most had hoped for or expected. History
in the future will confirm the same about today’s regimes that now project
evil.
For us Christians, our hope is not based on human power, but
on God because God represents truth and justice and these must always prevail
in the end. As Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar:
The dream is certain and its interpretation trustworthy.
Our lives are based not on any earthly regime, but on the
rock that is our Christian faith. The Kingdom of God is the stone which grew
into a great mountain, filling the whole world.
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Commentary on Luke
21:5-11
The Temple at Jerusalem in Jesus’ time was a magnificent
building and one of the wonders of the world. As the Gospel tells us, it had
been more than 40 years in the building and was not yet completed. People were
commenting to Jesus on the beautiful decorations of jewels and votive
offerings. His hearers must have been shocked, if not utterly sceptical, when
Jesus told them that, in time, the building would be utterly destroyed with
“not one stone…left upon another”. In our not too distant past, who would ever
have dreamt that the New York City World Trade Center, that temple to
capitalism, would be reduced to rubble in a just matter of minutes—and how much
more the Temple of God?
They asked Jesus:
Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign
that this is about to take place?
Jesus’ answer is directed more to the end of time than to
the actual destruction of the Temple, which occurred about 40 years later in
the year 70 AD. In fact, one event blends into the other. To many who were
witnesses to its destruction, it must have seemed like the end of their world.
What kind of life could they live without their Temple, without the dwelling
place of their God? How could Yahweh allow such a thing to happen? It left a
huge empty space in their lives which nothing else could fill.
Jesus’ warning is that his followers should not misread the
signs or be too alarmed. It seems the early Christians were expecting Jesus to
return for his Second Coming within their lifetime. This must have led to many
false alarms—people claiming to be the returned Lord, or warning that the end
of all things was close at hand. Even the destruction of the Temple (remember
many of the Christians were converted Jews) must have looked like the beginning
of the end. St Augustine had similar feelings as Rome, the heart of
Christendom, fell in ruins to the ‘barbarians’ (the ancestors of many of us!).
The end of Rome seemed to him like the end of the world.
Jesus tells his followers not to be too ready to believe
what they hear people saying. Nor are they to be too alarmed when they hear of
wars and social upheavals. There will be many natural disasters, widespread
diseases and celestial phenomena. These do not necessarily spell the end. The
message now being given is:
…the end will not follow immediately.
At every pivotal time in the history of our planet, there
are people who claim to see the end in sight. The coming of the third
millennium was no exception. So far they have all been wrong. The attitude of
Christians is not to be one of fear and anxiety. It sees the new era as a time
of challenge and opportunity, a time for new beginnings.
On a more personal and much more realistic level, we may be anxious
about the signs of our own time of departure from this world. But again, it
does not help to become fearful and anxious. Rather, we should work to live
each day to the fullest and to make it productive for ourselves and others.
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/o1343g/
Tuesday,
November 25, 2025
Ordinary Time
Opening prayer
Lord,
increase our eagerness to do your
will and help us to know the saving power of your love.
You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Gospel reading - Luke 21:5-11
When some were talking about the
temple, remarking how it was adorned with fine stonework and votive offerings,
Jesus said, “All these things you are staring at now, the time will come when
not a single stone will be left on another; everything will be destroyed.”
And they put to Him this question,
“Master,” they said, “when will this happen, and what sign will there be that
it is about to take place?”
But He said, “Take care not to be deceived, because many
will come using my name and saying, ‘I am the one’ and ‘The time is near at
hand.’ Refuse to join them. And when you hear of wars and revolutions, do not
be terrified, for this is something that must happen first, but it will not
immediately be the end.” Then He said to them, “Nation will fight against
nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes and
plagues and famines in various places; there will be terrifying events and
great signs from heaven.”
Reflection
•
The Gospel today begins with the discourse of
Jesus called the Apocalyptic Discourse. It is a long discourse which will be
the theme of the Gospels in the next days up to the last week of the liturgical
year. For us of the XXI century, the apocalyptic language is strange and
confusing. But, for the poor and persecuted people of the Christian communities
of that time, these were the words that everybody understood and the principal
purpose was to animate the faith and hope of the poor and oppressed. The
apocalyptic language is the fruit of the witness of faith by these poor people,
who in spite of the persecution, and against all contrary appearances,
continued to believe that God was with them and that He continued to be the
Lord of history.
•
Luke 21:5-7: Introduction to the Apocalyptic
Discourse. In the days leading up to the Apocalyptic Discourse, Jesus had
broken away from the temple (Lk 19:45-48), the priests and the elders (Lk
20:1-26), the Sadducees (Lk 20:27-40), and from the scribes who exploited the
widows (Lk 20:41-47). Finally, as we read in yesterday’s Gospel, He ends by
praising the widow who gave as alms all she possessed (Lk 21:1-4). Now, in
today’s Gospel, “while some were talking about the temple, remarking how it was
adorned with fine stonework and votive offerings, Jesus said: “The time will
come when not a single stone will be left on another everything will be
destroyed”. In listening to this comment of Jesus, the disciples asked:
“Master, when will this happen, then, and what sign will there be that it is
about to take place?” They ask for more information. The Apocalyptic Discourse
which follows is the response of Jesus to this question from the disciples on
when and how the destruction of the temple will take place. The Gospel of Mark
tells us the following about the context of this discourse which Jesus
pronounces. He says that Jesus had left the city and was now sitting on the
Mount of Olives (Mk 13:2-4). There, from the top of the mountain He had a
majestic view of the temple. Mark also says that there were only four disciples
who listened to His last discourse. At the beginning of His preaching, three
years before in Galilee, the crowds followed Jesus to listen to His words. Now,
in the last discourse, there are only four who listen: Peter, James, John and
Andrew (Mk 13:3).
•
Luke 21:8: Objective of the discourse:
"Take care not to be deceived!” The disciples had asked: “Master, when
will this happen, then, and what sign will there be that it is about to take
place?” Jesus begins His response with a warning: “Take care not to be
deceived. Many will come using my name and saying, ‘I am the one’ and ‘the time
is near at hand’; refuse to join them”. At a time of change and confusion there
are always people who want to take advantage of the situation and deceive
others. This happens today and it happened in the time of the 80’s, at the time
when Luke wrote his Gospel. Many thought that the end of time was close at hand
with the disasters and wars of those years, and the destruction of Jerusalem in
the year 70 and the persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire. There were
people who said: “God no longer controls the events! We are lost!” This is why
the main concern of the Apocalyptic Discourses is always the same: to help the
communities to better discern the signs of the times. They should not be
deceived by the conversations of people concerning the end of the world:
"Take care not to be deceived”. The discourse offers signs to help them
discern and increases their hope.
•
Luke 21:9-11: Signs to help them read the facts.
After this brief introduction, the discourse begins: “When you hear of wars and
revolutions, do not be terrified, for this is something that must happen first,
but the end will not come at once” Then He said to them: “Nation will fight
against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes
and plagues and famines in various places, there will be terrifying events and
great signs from heaven”. To understand these words one has to understand that
Jesus lives and speaks in the year 33. The readers of Luke live and listen in
the year 85. Now, in the 5o years between the year 33 and the year 85, the
majority of things mentioned by Jesus had already taken place and were known to
everyone. For example, in diverse parts of the world there were wars, false
prophets arose, there were sicknesses and plagues, and in Asia Minor, the
earthquakes were frequent. According to the apocalyptic style, this discourse
lists all these events, one after the other, as signs or stages of the project
of God in the history of the People of God, from the time of Jesus down to our
time:
-
1st sign: the false
Messiahs (Lk 21:8);
-
2nd sign: war and
revolutions (Lk
21:9);
-
3rd sign: nations
which fight against other nations, one kingdom against another kingdom (Lk
21:10);
-
4th sign:
earthquakes in different parts (Lk 21:11);
-
5th sign: hunger,
plagues and signs in the sky (Lk 21:11).
•
Here ends the Gospel for today. That of tomorrow
presents another sign: the persecution of the Christian communities (Lk 21:12).
Thus, by means of these signs within the Apocalyptic Discourse, the communities
of the 80’s, the time when Luke wrote his Gospel, could see God’s plan and
discover that history had not escaped the hands of God. Everything happened
according to what was foretold and announced by Jesus in the Apocalyptic
Discourse.
Personal questions
•
What sentiment or feeling did you experience
during the reading of today’s Gospel? Peace or fear?
•
Do you think that the end of the world is close
at hand? What can we answer to those who say that the end of the world is close
at hand? How can we encourage people today to resist and to have hope?
Concluding prayer
Let the countryside exult,
and all that is in it, and all the trees of the forest cry out for joy, at
Yahweh's approach, for He is coming, coming to judge the earth; He will judge
the world with saving justice, and the nations with constancy. (Ps 96:12-13)
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