Posted by The WORD in other words (2018) by Fr Joseph Miras SVD – Canada
Tuesday 34th Week in Ordinary Time
The literary genre to which this gospel passage belongs is called apocalyptico- eschatological. It views the destruction of the old world with its replacement with a new one at the coming of the Son of God. This cosmic change is triggered by celestial events and simultaneously the destruction of Jerusalem happens.
B. Malina and R. Rohrbauch (see their Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 2003), advance another perspective – social science – in interpreting this passage. They say that, in antiquity, persons about to die are prescient, meaning they are capable of knowing what is going to happen to persons close and dear to them. In other words, in their last moments they can make predictions about persons. Why they are capable, Malina and Rorhbauch reason out that dying persons are in an altered state of consciousness, which put them closer to the realm of the gods (God).
Whether we believe or we are not convinced by this interpretation, what matters most is the fact that we make sense of what happens around us – our environment, the world we live in, the social, economic, political and cultural dimensions of our world. And in the act of making sense, we come to understand and learn to adapt and even adjust ourselves.
There is no direct evidence yet from neuroscientists why the human brain produces images of the afterlife in moments of severe disturbance such as head injury, serious sickness or stroke or moments towards the end of life. But this is how nature adapts and adjusts to the world.
Could we not consider this as an amazing evidence of how the human brain (part of nature) regulates itself according to the laws given to it by God?
