Tuesday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 504

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.

Christians, reading this passage from the Book of Daniel, immediately recognize in the stone -- "hewn from a mountain without a hand being put it it" -- the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Rock of Ages;​​ the tested stone rejected which became the cornerstone; a stumbling stone​ for the unwary; and the watering rock which followed the Hebrews through the Sinai Desert. 

We also recognize the statue which disintegrated into powder when the rock struck its feet. The powers of this world are shattered by the rock which was rolled away from the tomb. 

That the rock struck the statue's feet, and not its head. reminds us of the unexpected nature of the cross. Where we looked for an overwhelming demonstration of might to shatter an impregnable earthly power, it was destroyed from beneath by a dead man who is not dead.

The winds of time blew away the dust without leaving a trace. Psalm 37 tells us the fate of the wicked, 

I have seen a ruthless scoundrel,

spreading out like a green cedar.

When I passed by again, he was gone;

though I searched, he could not be found.

Jesus prediction about the temple echoes Daniel's prophecy. No stone upon a stone describes the complete disappearance of the temple's grandeur and glitter. 

Finally, Daniel's stone becomes a great mountain and fills the earth. Or, as the psalmist says: 

A report goes forth through all the earth; their messages, to the ends of the world. (Psalm 19)

The Church sings that psalm whenever we celebrate an apostle's feast day. 

Between the Solemnity of Christ the King of the Universe and the First Sunday of Baptism, the Church offers us Daniel, the last of the prophets, with his visions of an unhewn stone and "One like a son of man coming on the clouds of heaven." 

Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.