Catholic Commentary
The Day of the Son of Man: Eschatological Discourse (Part 1)
22He said to the disciples, “The days will come when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it.23They will tell you, ‘Look, here!’ or ‘Look, there!’ Don’t go away or follow after them,24for as the lightning, when it flashes out of one part under the sky, shines to another part under the sky, so will the Son of Man be in his day.25But first, he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.26As it was in the days of Noah, even so it will also be in the days of the Son of Man.27They ate, they drank, they married, and they were given in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ship, and the flood came and destroyed them all.28Likewise, even as it was in the days of Lot: they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built;29but in the day that Lot went out from Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur from the sky and destroyed them all.
Luke 17:22–29 presents Jesus warning his disciples that they will long for the visible days of the Son of Man but must avoid false claims about his location, since his coming will be universally evident like lightning across the sky. He emphasizes that before this cosmic vindication comes necessary suffering and rejection, and illustrates the sudden judgment with the examples of Noah's flood and the destruction of Sodom, when ordinary worldly life ended abruptly.
Christ's return will be unmistakable—sudden as lightning across the whole sky—yet we prepare for it by staying awake in the ordinary moments of eating, working, and building.
Commentary
Luke 17:22 — Longing in the Dark Jesus addresses his disciples directly, distinguishing them from the Pharisees he has just corrected (vv. 20–21). "The days of the Son of Man" (plural) refers to the age of final fulfillment — the era of the Kingdom fully revealed. Jesus predicts a time of persecution and disillusionment when the disciples will yearn for even a single day of that manifest glory, yet will not experience it. This longing is not mere impatience; it anticipates the suffering of the Church between the Resurrection and the Parousia — the long vigil of history. The Greek ἐπιθυμήσετε (you will desire/long for) carries a strong emotional charge; the same word describes Jesus's own longing to eat the Last Supper with them (22:15). Shared longing binds master and disciple.
Luke 17:23 — The Danger of False Reports "Look, here!" or "Look, there!" — the warning closely parallels Mark 13:21 and Matthew 24:23, but Luke's placement within a travel narrative gives it pastoral urgency. The verb "follow after them" (ἀπέλθητε, ἀκολουθήσητε) echoes discipleship language used positively elsewhere in Luke. The deception Jesus warns against is precisely that it will use the vocabulary of discipleship: "come and see." History confirms this: false messiahs arose before the Jewish War of AD 66–70 (cf. Josephus, Jewish War 2.259–263) and again in every century of the Church. Augustine (City of God 18.52) warns that the Church must endure such "temptations of pseudo-prophets" until the end.
Luke 17:24 — Lightning Across the Sky The simile of lightning is the theological center of this unit. The coming of the Son of Man (ἡ παρουσία, implied here though Luke uses "his day") will be instantaneous, universal, and self-evident — it will require no announcement because it will be its own announcement. The lightning illuminates ὑπ᾽ οὐρανόν — "under heaven" — from one end to the other: no region is outside its light, no one can miss it or require a guide to it. This directly refutes the localized, secretive claims of the false reporters in v. 23. The imagery draws on theophany traditions in which God's self-revelation arrives with storm and fire (cf. Ps 18:14; Ezek 1:4). For the Catholic reader, this verse establishes the public, cosmic, irreversible character of the Second Coming — a note sounded clearly in the Catechism (§1038): "The resurrection of all the dead… will precede the Last Judgment… Christ will come in glory."
Luke 17:25 — The Necessary Passion This verse is structurally pivotal. Before glory must come rejection: "first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation." The word δεῖ (must) — so characteristic of Lukan theology (cf. 2:49; 4:43; 9:22; 24:7, 26) — signals divine necessity rooted not in fate but in the redemptive plan of the Father revealed in Scripture. The phrase "rejected by this generation" echoes Psalm 118:22 (the stone the builders rejected), which Jesus explicitly cites in Luke 20:17. The Passion is not an unfortunate prelude to the Parousia — it is its foundation. This is Lukan theology in miniature: the road to eschatological glory runs through the cross. St. Thomas Aquinas (ST III, q. 46, a. 3) connects this dei of the Passion to both divine justice and divine mercy.
Verses 26–27 — The Days of Noah Jesus introduces two Old Testament anti-types. The "days of Noah" are characterized not by extraordinary wickedness (Jesus does not say they were violent or corrupt, though Genesis notes this) but by the sheer normalcy of life: eating, drinking, marrying. The progression from eating and drinking to marriage suggests a complete absorption in the rhythms of biological existence — sustenance, pleasure, social continuity — with no reference to God. The tragedy is that the flood came and "destroyed them all" (ἅπαντας) — a word of total inclusion. Noah's boarding of the ark becomes a type of the moment of final decision, after which the door closes. Origen and Chrysostom both read Noah as a figure of the righteous remnant who heeded God's warning while the world slept.
Verses 28–29 — The Days of Lot Lot's contemporaries in Sodom are characterized by an even more elaborate list: eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building — the full range of economic and civic life. Society was functioning. Commerce was flourishing. Urban development was underway. And in a single day — "the day Lot went out" — fire and sulfur fell and destroyed them all. The parallelism with Noah is deliberate and intensifying: two historical catastrophes, each universal in scope within their context, each preceded by ordinary life undisturbed by awareness of God. Together, Noah and Lot frame a theology of history in which divine judgment breaks in upon a world that has mistaken the absence of catastrophe for the absence of God.
Catholic Commentary
Catholic tradition reads this passage within the Church's full eschatological teaching, resisting both excessive literalism and purely symbolic readings. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§§673–677) teaches that before the Parousia the Church will pass through a final trial that will "shake the faith of many believers," a reality Jesus anticipates in the longing of v. 22 and the warnings of v. 23. The lightning image of v. 24 directly supports the Church's dogmatic insistence on the public character of the Last Judgment — Christ's coming will be visible to all, "so that the whole human community might render judgment itself" (CCC §1039).
The dei of v. 25 is central to Catholic soteriology. Suffering precedes glory not arbitrarily but as the structural logic of redemption. The Second Vatican Council's Gaudium et Spes (§22) affirms that Christ "suffered and rose" as the key by which the mystery of human existence is unlocked — the Parousia cannot be understood apart from the Paschal Mystery.
The Noah and Lot typologies are embraced by St. Peter (2 Pet 2:5–9) and by the entire patristic tradition as figures of divine patience followed by decisive judgment. St. Jerome (Epistola 60) reads the "ordinary life" of these generations as a warning against acedia — spiritual sloth masquerading as normal life. St. John Chrysostom (Homilies on Matthew 77) stresses that these people were not condemned for eating and marrying but for only eating and marrying — for a life in which God was structurally absent. This maps precisely onto the Catholic understanding of mortal sin as a fundamental reorientation away from God, not merely isolated transgressions.
For Today
Contemporary Catholic life is deeply susceptible to exactly the condition Jesus diagnoses in vv. 26–29. A wealthy, comfortable, secular culture offers an unending stream of eating, drinking, buying, selling, scrolling, building, and planning — none of it evil in itself, all of it potentially anesthetic to the soul. The warning here is not against ordinary life but against ordinary life as a total horizon, lived without reference to God or the Last Things.
Practically, this passage calls Catholics to recover the ancient discipline of memento mori — remembering death and judgment — not as morbid anxiety but as the proper orientation of a creature accountable to a Creator. The Church's liturgical calendar builds this in: Ash Wednesday, the Office of the Dead, All Souls' Day. But beyond liturgy, the passage challenges us to ask: Is my daily routine interrupted by prayer? Does my financial life include serious attention to justice and generosity? Is my social and cultural engagement shaped by a horizon that extends beyond this world? The coming of the Son of Man like lightning means there will be no warning shot — only readiness or unreadiness.
Cross-References