Dn 12:1-3
Ps 16:5, 8, 9-10, 11
Heb 10:11-14, 18
Mk 13:24-32
I do not know about you, but I have had one of those weeks. One of those weeks where everything you see is bad news and everything you hear is about the troubles that people are having: some have to do with family, some with work, and some just generally about horrible tragic accidents. And it’s not just me, others are experiencing it too. And I find that different people take the bad news differently. Many fall into an emotional mess, they fall apart and fall into a dark despair. Others get angry, they start to blame and curse and just throw a complete fit. But then there’s another group that despite also experiencing the proportionately same amount of bad news react quite differently. They are not stoic or completely unaffected, they stutter a little bit – they’re shaken – and then move forward.
The skeptic would say – well they haven’t properly grieved and they are inhumane and are not in touch with their emotions. While that may be true for some, I think for us as Christians, it is the persistent and ever-deepening relationship with our Lord that keeps us anchored and grounded. When St. Augustine of Hippo writes the ever-popular statement, “Our hearts are restless, until they rest in you.” I ask what are the causes of that restlessness? They could come from ourselves and our fickle nature. It could also arise very much from the storms of daily life. We must first anchor ourselves in the harbor of Jesus Christ – then we will have little difficulty and struggle in the tempests that blow through our lives.
Our readings today give us a pretty gloomy picture: the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky…. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake… some shall live forever, others shall be an everlasting horror and disgrace. And you thought Halloween was over!!!! As we are rounding off the last few weeks of the liturgical year, the lectionary cycle is signaling the “beginning of the end”. We are celebrating the Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time – and next week will be the end of the Liturgical Year with the celebration of the end of the world and Christ the King of the Universe! Notice it’s a celebration and not a depressing moment, because there will be a new heavens and a new earth, but this world must pass away first.
I think it’s fascinating that our liturgical year is shaped this way. The leaves are falling, things are dying and the days are darkening sooner. We simultaneously commemorate the end of the created universe and our world with the seasons of fall and winter: the end of life on earth and the end of time. [Southern Hemisphere excluded]
But however gloomy it gets, however sad it gets with things going badly, we should not be depressed. Because we know and we believe that there is something beyond. We know and believe this because God, our Father has revealed this to us since the beginning of time. The Responsorial Psalm is just so rich our dependence, our reliance on Him and then His ultimate desire for us: O Lord, you are my allotted portion and my cup, you hold fast my lot…with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed…. You will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption…. Our Lord God is always faithful to us and never forgets us. There's a story that I think is quite fitting for this occasion:
From A Father Who Keeps His Promises – by Dr. Scott Hahn
Everybody felt it: a moment of eerie silence, a low rumble and then the ground began to shake. Buildings swayed and buckled, then collapsed like houses of cards. Less than four minutes later, over thirty thousand were dead from a magnitude 8.2 earthquake that rocked and nearly flattened Armenia in 1989.
In the muddled chaos, a distress father bolted through the winding streets leading to the school where his son had gone earlier that morning. The man couldn’t stop thinking about the promise he’d given his son many times: “No matter what happens, Armand, I’ll always be there.”
He reached the site where the school had been, but saw only a pile of rubble. He just stood there at first, fighting back tears, and then took off, stumbling over debris, toward the east corner where he knew his son’s classroom had been.
With nothing but his bare hands, he started to dig. He was desperately pulling up bricks and pieces of wall-plaster, while others stood by watching in forlorn disbelief. He heard someone growl, “Forget it, mister. They’re all dead.”
He looked up, flustered, and replied, “You can grumble, or you can help me lift these bricks.” Only a few pitched in, and most of them gave up once their muscles began to ache. But the man couldn’t stop thinking about his son.
He kept digging and digging – for hours … twelve hours … eighteen hours … twenty-four hours … thirty-six hours … Finally, into the thirty-eight hour, he heard a muffled groan from under a piece of wallboard.
He seized the board, pulled it back, and cried, “ARMAND!” From the darkness came a slight shaking voice, “Papa…!?”
Other weak voices began calling out, as the young survivors stirred beneath the still uncleared rubble. Gasps and shouts of bewildered relief came from the few onlookers and parents who remained. They found fourteen of the thirty-three students still alive.
When Armand finally emerged, he tried to help dig, until all his surviving classmates were out. Everybody standing there heard him as he turned to his friends and said, “See, I told you my father wouldn’t forget us.”
The signs of the times give us a bleak outlook. It is a sign of our mortality, a sign that we do not live forever. Even more so as we remember our loved ones in this month of November – designated as a special month to pray for all those that have died. At the end of the world, there will be a final judgment and there will be heaven and hell – an eternal reward or an eternal punishment. But we have nothing to fear if we hold fast and keep the faith in God. But I challenge you not to approach your faith in trying to avoid hell, but to approach your faith in a relationship with Jesus Christ. Your mind tends towards the things that you focus on.
Parents, your children are depending on you in all these things: to be the perfect parent and to be the perfect example. I don’t know a single parent who is only trying to be mediocre. But I do know many parents who struggle with trying to be the perfect parent because they did not have the perfect example of parenting growing up. In this worry, they compensate for this and that and for everything else and in the end, it seems like they are doing worse than their own parents [in-laws tend to remind them frequently of this matter]. Some say do your best and leave the rest up to God. I say, start with God in your life first – invite Him into your family -- and then do your best with God. Your children will learn about their relationship with God from YOUR relationship with God. If your relationship is strong and true, then your children’s will be too.
We do not know what disaster will happen in our lives, when tragedy will strike, or when the end of the world will come. However, if we trust in Him and keep the faith strong, we will find a safe place, a safe harbor and we’ll be anchoring ourselves to the One who will never forget us or abandon us.
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