SEE IN THE CORONAVIRUS A DIVINE CASTIGO? REFLECTIONS ON THE END OF TIMES: FEAR OR HOPE? AS FOR THAT DAY AND A that hour …

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It is not appropriate and respectful to God the Father to see divine punishment in temporal calamities, intimately consuming a veiled sense of revenge and satisfaction towards all those who have not yet converted and who oppose God. Those days are mysterious and must remain so.

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Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Capp.

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Masaccio, Brancacci chapel (Florence), Expulsion of Adam and Eve from earthly Paradise

In a passage from the Gospel of San Matteo we read an apparently enigmatic sentence pronounced by Christ the Lord: But of that day and at that hour, But, nobody knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father [cf. Mt 24, 36].

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In the climate of fear and uncertainty like what we experienced during the quarantine because of Covid-19, someone particularly sensitive began to caress the idea that this viral infection was actually a sign of the times. This idea takes shape on the profiles social of many people, some of them believers, which is why a little clarity is needed. Instead of entertaining us with the various messages of visionaries, mystics and prophets on duty it is right to give priority to the message of the Gospel as authentic and definitive revelation.

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The expression "sign of the times" it should not arouse any fear and anguish in the believer's soul, nor much less be used as a synonym of end of the world, precisely because it is attributable to the teaching of Jesus and his evangelizing work. In Matthew's Gospel in chap. 16 verse 3 we find these words: «You don't know how to distinguish - Jesus asks the Pharisees and the Sadducees - the signs of the times?».

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In front of his listeners who demanded a sign that would confirm his divine identity and authority - something that the devil in the desert had already demanded - The Lord asks a question that directs their attention to the Father's work of salvation through the mediation of the Son.

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The message is clear. It is not necessary to produce external signs to know that God inhabits time, Jesus is the definitive sign of the Father with which it is possible to read the times. It is curious - but if we go to analyze the Gospel episode well - we realize how the Pharisees and Sadducees are more concerned with pulling Jesus by the jacket and associating him with the reliable club, instead of acknowledging that the Kingdom of God has already begun to reveal itself among them in the power and freedom of the Holy Spirit.

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The messianic hour has come but the teachers of Israel are unable to recognize it and - even more embarrassing - the hour of salvation has come precisely in times where the freedom of a people is challenged by the occupying Roman Empire. An authentic blasphemy for every pious Israelite!

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Today we have not lost freedom because of an invading people, we found ourselves losing it to a virus. Speak about signs of the times it means referring to the work of Jesus in the midst of his people, it means to say that Jesus is saving me now, in this time of epidemic, while we were at home sad and disconsolate, while we worried about the future of our loved ones.

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It gave, in these Coronavirus times, he speaks to us through the eloquent sign of his risen Son, not through other languages ​​or through vindictive punishments. I say this precisely to reassure all those who are listening to me and who risk exchanging this epidemic as a divine punishment.

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I borrow the words of Pope John XXIII to arouse hope within our Christian life during these days of forced exile from the world:

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«We like to place a very firm trust in the divine Savior […] that urges us to recognize the signs of the times ", so that "we see numerous clues among dark darkness, which seem to herald better times for the Church and for mankind " [cf. A.A.S. 1962, p. 6].

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Jesus does not push men to have morbid curiosities on the date of his return to earth or the expiry of the time available to us. It is not appropriate and respectful to God the Father to see divine punishment in temporal calamities, intimately consuming a veiled sense of revenge and satisfaction towards all those who have not yet converted and who oppose God. Those days are mysterious and must remain so. "It is not for you to know the times and moments that the Father has reserved for his choice ..." [cf. At 1,7]. Comment on this passage from the Acts of the Apostles St. Jerome explains: «By this he shows that he [Jesus] knows, but it is not fitting that the Apostles know, so that, always uncertain about the coming of the judge, live every day as if they were to be judged on that day ».

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We see the sign that it is Christ, in this time when it seems that a virus has the upper hand on our lives, on our faith, about our religious traditions, we see Christ, today that the days of the first major emergency seem to have passed, we all lived sadly in fear and bewilderment; we throw away the old water, but looking for new water, that is, the living water of the Gospel, of the encounter with Christ that assures us: «Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass " [CF. Mt 24, 35].

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But of that day and at that hour … let's not be upset, we see Jesus, only in the judgmental encounter with his love can everything acquire meaning, everything will finally be fine.

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Laconi, 27 May 2020

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