We know that the Church’s year is drawing to a close when we get
readings like the ones we got today. Both the reading from the Prophet
Daniel and the passage from Mark’s gospel point to the end times and
they do so in decidedly apocalyptic language – vivid, visionary,
colorful, poetic, and highly symbolic. Both readings employ language and
imagery rooted in human experience but they go well beyond human
experience. In Daniel, the language is of the Great Tribulation where
there will be unsurpassed distress leading up to the final judgment. In
Mark’s gospel, the coming of the Son of Man in glory is accompanied by a
darkened sun, the moon’s light moon failing, stars falling from the sky,
and the very powers of heaven being shaken.
Is any
of this to be taken literally? No. That’s not the nature of apocalyptic
literature. The apocalyptic writers were the J. R. R. Tolkien’s or maybe
the Salvador Dali’s of their day. We might even say that they are closer
to science fiction than to hard science. So, no literal reading, but
that doesn’t mean that truth is not conveyed in all the fantastic
imagery. It most certainly is. Both of those readings convey a most
profound and pressing truth; namely, that the world as we know it will
come to an end. This mixed-bag, mixed-up world of ours, this world of
sin and selflessness, of laughter and tears, of hunger and plenty, of
hovels and high-rises, of angry volcanoes and serene sunsets, of war and
peace – or however we choose to describe this world of ours – this world
is going to come to an end. God’s magnificent plan will one day be
finally realized, the human family will share in the victory of Christ,
and creation itself will be “set free from its labor pains and share in
the glorious freedom of the children of God” (to borrow words from St.
Paul’s Letter to the Romans).
If all
of this doesn’t get us thinking, stir our curiosity, and awaken our
emotions, we must be asleep at the switch! Humans that we are, we are
naturally curious and we ought to want to know not only that these
things will take place in one way or another, but when they will take
place. Is the last day tomorrow or ten years from now, or a thousand, or
is it light years away? Will it happen in an instant or will it unfold
over time, or will we not even know or care since time itself will have
ceased? The answer is: we do not know. As we heard in today’s gospel,
“of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor
the Son, but only the Father.”
But,
my friends, such ignorance should not immobilize us or leave us feeling
entirely impotent. In fact, it should fire the engines of our hope,
deepen our longing, make us stand on our tiptoes, so to speak. Even
though we Christians should live our lives in the now, embracing each
day – each moment – as grace, as gift from God, our orientation should
also be to what is to come as we look beyond the now to what will be: to
the culmination of the created order and the Second Coming of Christ.
That means that there is always going to be a certain tension in our
lives - or there should be - a tension between the now and what is to
come. As someone once put it, we must not be ‘so heavenly-minded as to
be no earthly good.’ But neither can we be so wedded to this world that
we give little or no thought to what is to come.
You
know, I’m sure, that the last words of the entire Bible – the conclusion
of the Book of Revelation – are “Come, Lord Jesus!” Those words were the
frequent prayer – a kind of mantra - of the earliest Christians, the
expression of their constant awareness and their deepest longing. They
should be for us, as well: “Come, Lord Jesus.”
We get an
echo of them every time we pray the Lord’s prayer and say “thy kingdom
come,” and at every Mass when we hear words so familiar that we’re apt
to tune them out - these words, “By the help of your mercy, may we be
free from sin and safe from all distress as we await the blessed hope
and the coming of our savior, Jesus Christ.”
My
friends in Christ, it is good – it is salutary – for us to think about
these things. And it is imperative that we live our lives in the light
of these things. In another week we will mark the end of the Church’s
year as we celebrate the feast of Christ the King, and the Sunday
following that, we will begin the season of Advent, a word whose very
meaning is ‘the coming.’ And there are three comings we look to: first,
we look back to the coming of Christ at Christmas; then, we embrace the
coming of Christ in all the ways he manifests himself to us right now
during this earthly pilgrimage, including at our own death; and lastly,
we look forward to the coming of Christ in glory at the end of time. Any
way you look at it, the Christian life is all about Advent, it’s an
extended Advent!
On
this particular Sunday, the Church wants us to fix our eyes on the third
of those comings: Christ’s coming “in great power and glory.” But, my
friends, we must not let that ultimate horizon blind us to the near
horizon: to Christ’s daily comings among us – in the Breaking of the
Bread, yes, but also in rags and tatters, hungry, lonely, frightened,
sick, suffering. Our challenge will always be to recognize him in all
those unlikely disguises. If we do, we will be more than prepared to
recognize him when he comes in glory.
Come, Lord Jesus!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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