Greetings, Church Fans! We are nearing the end of Ordinary Time and entering the season of Gratitude and Hope. Vid and text below.
There is the story of the priest and the rabbi who are standing by a bend in the side of the road with a sign that says, “The End is near!”
After a few minutes a big pickup truck drives by at high speed, as it passes the driver says, “You stupid religious nuts! Get off the road!”
Shortly after it goes out of sight around the bend, there is the sound of screeching tires and then a big splash.
The rabbi looks at the priest and says, “Do you think we should have written: ‘The Bridge is Out’?
As we near the end of Ordinary Time, the readings shift and the Church asks us to contemplate the end of all time. During the daily and Sunday readings we get eschatological readings such as the one this weekend from Luke. There is a lot going on in this reading. In this column, I’m just going to look at the first part of it.
In the first section Jesus tells the people admiring the Temple that soon not one stone will be left upon another. That would have been pretty shocking to his listeners. The Temple was the dwelling place of the Most High God. It represented the eternal covenant with Israel. Destruction of the Temple would be the ultimate disaster. Yet, in 70 A.D., that is exactly what happened when the Roman General Titus brutally put down the Jewish nationalistic revolt and ordered the complete destruction of the Temple. Like all things Roman, they did a completely thorough job.
In our own day, popular culture is rife with apocalyptic and dystopic books and films and whatnot that depict the collapse of society by forces from without or within. While it is comforting to learn from a well-funded study that Alaska is seen as the most likely place on the earth to survive a zombie apocalypse, such dark and pervasive images in popular our culture tell me that secular humanism has failed our society. There just is not a lot of hope out there. The end is near.
How very different from what we Christians believe and profess. For us, the End of the Age and the second coming of Christ represents the fulfillment of all our deepest hopes and desires. We await the blessed hope, not with fear and trembling. Jesus warns that the end times will not be without their trials, but so what? For us the end is not the destruction of all things, but the completion and the perfection of all things. What we await are new heavens and a new earth where all creation, including you and me, truly become what God has intended us to be, perfectly human body and soul.
Without question, all churches, from St. Peter’s Basilica to our own little parish church of St. Elizabeth’s will cease to exist…and we will be so happy about it. Exalting in the true and substantial presence of Christ, there will be no more need for his sacramental presence. The Church in all its members will be glorified with him before the Father. Is the end near? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Nevertheless, for us it represents all that we are now, and all that we hope to be in the resurrection of the dead and life of the world to come. Amen.