Sunday Gospel Reflection, November 17, 2019: Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven...

Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven…

Should you be afraid of the future?

  It’s hard to face what we might call the end times… to imagine that the world as we know it will end in the not unimaginable future, whether it be due to our own personal demise or to a cataclysmic event that affects our entire nation or even the planet.  This hesitation to face what’s coming is part of human nature.  In the Book of Malachi, for example, the people of Israel are cynical, weary, and even negligent, so God calls them to reform, announcing a general reckoning for those who fail to change their ways:  Lo, the day is coming when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble… Jesus has a very similar message in Luke’s Gospel:  the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.  The images in both stories are violent:  blazing fires, violent destruction, both natural and human-made, and even oppression and intense suffering:  they will seize and persecute you because of my name, Jesus tells his disciples.  It is all quite terrifying!

  But, as both Malachi and Jesus reassure their listeners, God is just.  We may, like certain lazy members of the Thessalonians' community, be acting in a disorderly way, not minding our own business but complicating the lives of others, distracted by end times we imagine as coming soon.  Or our sins might be more serious, sins against justice toward our fellow human beings.  Yet Malachi speaks of the sun of justice with its healing rays that will shine on those who fear God’s name, and Jesus encourages his listeners to exercise clear-headedness and endurance:  By your perseverance you will secure your lives.  However, total commitment is necessary – total commitment to orderly living, to living in awe of God’s power, in right relationship with God, a God who comes to rule the earth with justice (Psalm 98) and expects us to be just in turn, life-giving to those around us, committed to the name of Jesus, living for him before all else.  There is nothing to fear, in truth – not a hair on your head will be destroyed – so long as we surrender our lives to the God who loves us, with confidence in his name, open to mysteries that are beyond our comprehension, accepting change and challenges as they come, secure in the knowledge that our just God rules the peoples with equity, and will rule us with equity as well.

Image source:  www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, November 13, 2016: By your perseverance you will secure your lives...

By your perseverance you will secure your lives…

Do you ever worry about heaven?

   We tend not to want to think about the mystery of what will happen to us at the moment of our death or thereafter.  And in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus does not try to make the disciples feel good about the end times:  he makes reference to the earthquakes, famine and plagues, not to mention the betrayal and persecution, that are to come.  But his ultimate message is reassuring:  Not a hair on your head will be destroyed; by your perseverance you will secure your lives.  Surrender to the love of God that is your confidence, he is saying; stand face to face with the mystery you do not understand, open yourself to it, and allow faith to deepen your appreciation of that mystery.  Embrace the change that is to come, and be thereby drawn more deeply into a new reality that will last forever, even if it seems you must pass through disorder, and fire, to get there.

   For as Psalm 98 reassures us, The Lord comes to rule the earth with justice, that same justice that the prophet Malachi refers to when he speaks of the sun of justice with its healing rays, rays that will heal and purify those who have been faithful to covenant, unlike all the proud and all the evildoers who will be set ablaze, leaving them neither root nor branch.  This is the Lord’s rule, a rule of equity and justice that calls for praise.  But so long as we are on this earth, we must contribute to that equity as best we can.  Even in Paul’s time, when many believed the end times were imminent, the Thessalonians are told to be mindful of their responsibility toward others. Rather than be unwilling to take on their fair share of the toil and drudgery, thereby sowing disorder, Paul encourages all to follow the model of the disciples, fostering equity through shared responsibility and care of others as they wait for the fulfillment of the mystery that is to come.

   All of us need to be purified, purified of our brokenness, purified of our disorderly ways, so that we can open ourselves to faith in the mystery that saves, the mystery of perfect union that we can know only after death.  Before the end times, though, only the sun of justice with its healing rays can eradicate all disorder by the love of God that sows confidence and strength.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class
Image source:  Wordle