Only two weeks from today we will celebrate the First Sunday of Advent and the beginning of a new Church Year. I don’t know about you, but every year Advent sneaks up on me like a thief; I then feel the ending of a period in my life, but also the birth of a new hope, a new beginning. By means of this cycle of the liturgical year the Church, in her wisdom, sets before our eyes very vividly the reality of the unavoidable end of our lives and of the history of the world, and the expectation of good things to come: The day is coming, says the prophet Malachy to us today, blazing like an oven when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. … But for you who fear my name, the sun of justice will arise with healing in its wings. We do well to contemplate this reality of the day of reckoning with our minds and with our hearts, through the words and teachings of the Lord Jesus himself. The great challenge posed to us by this meditation is to decide what will be our attitude in the face of this impending reality of the End of Time, when we believe that the Lord Jesus himself will come in glory, to judge and to save.
Let us start by asking what emotions are evoked in us when we imagine this awesome reality of our encounter with the Lord at the end of our lives. What do we feel? Fear? Joy? Excitement? Curiosity? Satisfaction? Hope? Disappointment? Relief? What we feel spontaneously in this connection will probably tell us, if we are honest, a great deal about the state of our relationship with God and of our relationship with this world and everything it offers us. Are our hearts truly fixed on God, so that we long for union with him above all things? Do we conceive of the coming of Christ to us as a liberation and a fulfillment of our greatest desires? Or, are we so attached to the persons and things of this world that, even though we profess Christ with our lips, nevertheless in our hearts we are very sad that life as we know it will come to an end? Do we see our relationships with all those we love as a means of helping one another fulfill our destiny of eternal communion with God in Christ? Or, rather, do we see marriage, family, friendships, lifestyle, and work as ends in themselves, as absolute sources of meaning and salvation? In a word, is the primary relationship in our lives that with God or rather that with other persons, projects and possessions? What is really more important to us: truth, justice, mercy, or pleasure?
To get our bearings, let us look for guidance in the sacred texts the Church offers us today. In the gospel we hear a part of what is called Jesus’ “eschatological discourse” according to Luke, that is, his long sermon on the end-time. The location is the temple in Jerusalem, where many people are enthralled with admiration, looking at the impressive solidity of the temple and the very costly stones and offerings that embellish it. It seemed to the Jews that the temple would last forever, because it was the grandest building they had ever seen, and also because it had been granted to them by God himself. And yet Jesus says that all that magnificence will come tumbling down one day. For the Jews, this was a great tragedy that announced the end of the world. Jesus takes the occasion to describe a number of historical and natural catastrophes, like earthquakes and wars, that point to the world’s end. But then comes the most important part of the sermon, when Jesus warns his disciples sternly, saying: See that you not be deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, “I am he,” and “The time has come.” Do not follow them!
This warning of the Lord is crucial for us Christians because it means that the end of the world will not occur mechanically enforced by some law of destiny allegedly inscribed in the stars and proclaimed by all kinds of charlatans and impostors. No! The end of the world will occur only with the coming of the one and only Jesus, Lord of history and creation, and the moment of this coming depends entirely on the freedom of God’s gracious will, which always seeks our good, and not on any impersonal process of history or nature. This is why Malachy prophesies that those who fear God’s name have nothing terrible to fear as they await the end of the world. The coming of the Lord Jesus, the one who loves us and has shed his blood for us, can never be a reason for fear for the Christian.
To reassure us, his followers, and give us courage, the Lord Jesus next pronounces a clear and strong teaching, full of hope and power, in four points. In this teaching, he tells us what the interior attitude of our heart should be and how, consequently, we should behave in this world as we await his coming. For the true Christian, the thought of Christ’s Second Coming should never cause anxiety, fear, panic, idle curiosity, speculation, and gossiping. We must simply remain clear-head and realistic, anchored in faith and hope, that is, anchored in Christ:
1. witness through persecution First of all, Jesus says that we will be persecuted because of his name; but this very persecution becomes an opportunity to preach the Gospel and give witness to the Savior and the coming of God’s kingdom. The very fire that will destroy some here becomes a purifying fire of mercy—an occasion for the disciples to finally become disciples fully!
2. infused wisdom Second, Jesus says: Remember, … I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute. In other words, it is the active presence of the loving Jesus and of the power of his Spirit within us that is the only source of our hope and strength. In the midst of persecution, we can have peace and joy, because we know we are in fact already living the very life of Christ and performing the redeeming work of God as his apostles.
3. powerful protection Third, despite all appearances to the contrary, Jesus promises that not a hair on your head will be destroyed. Yes! Despite all the violence that human beings can inflict, we believe that they cannot harm the core of our being because the power of Jesus’ Resurrection is the operating principle of each of our lives: we are, after all, the living and indestructible Temple of the Body of Christ, and we, therefore, share with Christ both his Passion and Death and his Resurrection!
4. persevere! Finally, Jesus’ concluding statement today sums up everything else in a most practical teaching: By your perseverance, you will secure your lives. After he has given us so much, the one concrete thing that Jesus asks from us is to persevere, that is, not to give up hope in him and his promises, not give in to worldly pressures and threats, but to continue living our lives in him and by his power come hell or high water, in the certain knowledge that his wisdom and love and fidelity will always triumph in the end.
I would like to conclude on a very practical note, particularly relevant to us monks but, I think, also applying to all Christians. Today’s reading from St Paul’s Second Letter to the Thessalonians has a very specific focus, which is this social teaching: If anyone [is] unwilling to work, neither should that one eat. At once we wonder what this homey teaching has to do with the end of time and the coming of Christ…. The context indicates that what occasions this teaching from Paul is the problem of busybodies in the community of Thessalonika, people who go around not minding their own business but creating trouble by spreading rumors and speculations concerning the day of the Lord, which they insist is at hand. These trouble-makers have been seized by the mania for pseudo-prophecy. They think they have a private, superior knowledge, and have consequently decided that, since the Lord is coming soon, they don’t really need to work. They prefer to spend their time chattering away about the end time and sowing unrest in the community. Besides troubling the peace of the Church, they think everybody owes them a living. They have, in fact, become pious parasites! Paul’s answer to them is that he himself has worked night and day in toil and drudgery, so as not to burden anyone, and that this is the example everyone should imitate.
The very monastic point these readings leave us with, therefore, is this: that the only fitting Christian manner to await the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, whenever he chooses to come, is for us to persevere in leading everyday “ordinary, obscure, and laborious lives”, peacefully praying and working, and serving one another with selfless love quietly and intensely, and so building up the Body of Christ in this world. The genuine Christian apocalypse that truly reveals the presence of Christ in glory does not happen loudly and dramatically like exploding fireworks or crashing towers. Christ never comes with fanfare. The more quietly we live, the sooner we will meet the Lord Jesus.
The Christian
apocalypse is contained in each moment of our existence, in each encounter, in
each event, no matter how hidden, because it’s under the ordinary veil of
everyday life (as under the ordinary veil of the appearances of bread and wine,
soon to be offered on this altar) that the extraordinary Christ is waiting for
us, to take us to himself and, along with himself, to the everlasting embrace
of the Father’s joy.
Homily by Father Simeon.
