Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jan 06 2025

Prepare for the Day of the Lord

People say that 9/11 changed us irrevocably, that we have lost for good a sense of being invulnerable. That dreadful day revealed we were no longer secure from the kind of violence that could suddenly turn our world upside down, shattering our well-being, bringing death and destruction, and leaving us in a world of fear, insecurity, and anxiety. Unfortunately, such experiences characterize so much of human history.

The destruction of the temple in 70 A.D., an event that Jesus could see coming, was an “end of the world” experience for the people of Jerusalem. The temple was for them the heart of the city, the most sacred space for Israel, God’s dwelling place among the Chosen People. Luke’s own community also knew of the persecution and hardship Jesus speaks of today. What was important then and remains important now is a willingness to give witness to the Lord in all circumstances, even when doing so threatens our world. We too can take comfort in Jesus’ words: “I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.”

Consider Jesus’ final words today: “By your perseverance you will secure your lives.” We can take comfort knowing that if we persevere, when the Day of the Lord comes, we will counted among the just who will experience it as the arrival of “the sun of justice with its healing rays.” In the meantime, as Paul advises, go about your lives, working quietly to bring about the kingdom of God.

Consider/Discuss

Don’t we already know the “Day of the Lord” every Sunday when Christ comes to us in the Eucharist?
How are you called to witness to the Lord in your life?

Responding to the Word

God who comes, we ask that you give us the grace to persevere through whatever trials and upheavals come into our lives. Help us to live in the awareness that your Son is with us and continues to draw us more deeply into communion with you through the working of the Holy Spirit.

Dec 12 2024

God’s Ways, Not Our Ways

Theologians tells us that we have a God who speaks, a God who is by nature a Self-communicator. There is a symphony of voices through which the Lord of the universe sings to us—through the created world, through salvation history and the prophets of old, through the preaching of the apostles, through the Holy Spirit at work in our midst, and of course through the written saga of the Word-become-flesh, Jesus himself, as recorded in the scriptures. Our God is not silent.

Today, Luke gives us Jesus’ final end-times speech. Calamities and disasters will happen. Read the signs of the times in history and in the created world: earthquakes, famines, plagues! Persecutions, wars, and insurrections! Bad stuff. The end is coming. Be attentive!

There are times when we are more aware of our fallibility, our finitude, and our ability to break. In the northern hemisphere, November is such a month. The tree branches look lifeless. The sunflower stalks are in the compost bin. The Baltimore orioles have flown south. The daylight grows short.

We do not know the future. Jesus says not to presume that we do; we should not be deceived. Though God is always speaking, there are some things about which God does not communicate—not the when, not the how, not the where—of the world’s end or our own. About that, God is silent.

Malachi prophesies about the coming of the day of the Lord, in a blaze, on fire!

And yet, ironically, when that great and terrible day came, the Savior of the universe, slid through the birth canal of a young woman, in the most helpless way possible, to come into the world. Is there a heavenly sense of humor?

God’s ways are not our ways. We do not know what is coming.

Consider/Discuss

We understand some things. Yet there is so much more that we do not grasp. Who knows what is yet to come? How can we persevere and remain faithful, be attentive and stay strong in trust, even though we do not know?
Bad things happen. But whether we live or die, no matter what darkness swirls around us, no matter how dire the situation, the Lord desires to shine through us like stars in the night sky. You and I are to be the blessing of God in this point of history. What does that mean for how are we to act? For how we are to pray? How can you and I grab onto that personal mission even more strongly as this church year draws to a close?

Living and Praying with the Word

Lord, you are the God of surprises. If we had known so many years ago what our lives would be like, would we have had the strength to walk forward into them? Thank you that you don’t show us the future either! But you do show yourself to us in so many little ways, right here and right now. You are full of amazements! Who would have guessed that you would have become flesh in the way that you did? Do you chuckle a bit at that? You are so good. Lead us to your eternal light, whenever and however that comes. Thank you, thank you, God of glory!

Dec 12 2024

Scripture Study for

The first several decades of the post-exilic period were a time of great trial. The former kingdom of Judah remained under foreign rule and only very slowly emerged from severe economic and demographic stagnation. Malachi focuses on additional problems: the resumption of injustice in the land, widespread marital infidelity, and priestly negligence and complacency. Through the prophet, God continually chastises the people for persisting in many of the very behaviors that led to the Exile in the first place. Where was the purification that was supposed to have taken place? The people always respond to these criticisms with disbelief: “How have we disdained your name?” (1:6). The prophet and others begin to wonder, “Where is the just God?” (2:17). In response we have today’s short reading. There will come a purifying fire when the Lord comes in judgment. The heat of God’s judgment will consume evildoers, but it will bring “healing rays” for those who are faithful to God.

In his conclusion to his Second Letter to the Thessalonians, Paul exhorts the community to avoid acting in a “disorderly” way, which is to say, in a way that disrupts the peace and harmony of the community. This can happen in a couple of ways: by sowing doubt and dissension about Christian doctrine or by refusing to contribute to the needs of the community through work (3:6). As they have been instructed to look to Christ as a model of trust in God (3:5), so they should look to Paul as a model of industriousness for the “common good.” Paul and his companions have avoided burdening the Thessalonians by demanding anything from them, but instead have worked for their bread. Those among them who are shunning work (perhaps because they thought the parousia had already occurred) or otherwise disrupting the harmony of the community are not looking out for the good of that community.

The temple in Jerusalem was massive and completely covered in gold. It must have been hard to imagine that it could ever be destroyed, as Jesus claims it will be (and was, by the Romans, in A.D. 70). Jesus assures the crowd that there will come a time when the world will come undone. But before this, and more immediately relevant to them, his followers will be subjected to the same trials and persecution that he is about to undergo. In response to this, they should not fear, but trust in God and see the trials as occasions to proclaim the gospel, which is perhaps most effectively and authentically preached under such circumstances. Although many will suffer, some even to the point of death, yet “not a hair on your head will be destroyed” if they remain faithful. He is speaking, of course, of life in him, both in this world and in the next.

Nov 06 2024

Reflection-Visions of the End

In the 1400s, artists depicted Doom. Jan Van Eyck painted grisly naked bodies, deformed and in torment, with a skull-like figure hovering over them. Hans Memling depicted the Last Judgment with bodies flung about; a demon seizes a helpless man by the ankle and smashes a foot on his neck. The people of Europe had just come through one of the most hellish centuries in memory—war, famine, and bubonic plague had decimated Europe. They had seen dead bodies. They had seen people starve. The artwork reflected that desolation. Where was God in all that tribulation? The mild Jesus of the thirteenth century’s artists was gone. The art of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries tended to portray God as harsh, judgmental, and aloof. If you needed help, go ask his mother or one of the other saints. God wasn’t likely to help you.

Where are we now? When we hear Jesus talk this week about tribulations and stars falling from the sky, is this more real than it used to be? Could we be wiped out by war, or famine, or disease? When the prophet Daniel speaks of a “time unsurpassed in distress,” does that feel more like a possibility?

I know a young woman who lost two of her grandparents in one day during the COVID-19 pandemic. The immediate response was, “God, where are you in this?” If desolation goes on for a hundred years, as it did in the fourteenth century, will our perspective of God change? Will we believe that God is likely to help us?

Jesus says that we cannot know the day or the hour of the end. But with the psalmist, we ask for the grace to hang onto a belief in a good end, believing God will not abandon us to Sheol, the land of the dead. God alone is our inheritance!

Consider/Discuss

How has your perspective about the end-times changed since five or ten years ago? Have recent tribulations altered your perception of God? If so, how? If not, why not?
Many recent movies and shows deal with apocalyptic scenarios. Have you seen one that has impacted you? How do the protagonists deal with the end-of-the-world trials that they face? Where is/isn’t faith in God present in those end-times situations? Six centuries from now, how will people look back and see how our artists are depicting the Divine in the twenty-first century?

Living and Praying with the Word

Jesus, from your words, you appear to have a long perspective. While we measure time in days and years, you see things in centuries and eons. If heaven and earth pass away, will your words not also pass away? That is hard for us to envision. Give us your eyesight this day. The end of the world is a scary prospect and we cannot handle that without your help. Strengthen us this day for whatever the future brings. In the midst of our fears, be our Peace. When trials come, be our Rock. No matter what happens, show us the path of life and allow us to glorify you forever.

Nov 06 2024

Visions of the End

The reading from the book of Daniel contains the only clear Old Testament reference to resurrection. The passage is situated in a section that focuses on the persecutions and sufferings of the faithful during the period of Greek rule. In standard apocalyptic language, the oracle foresees the day when God’s armies—led by the angel Michael—will come to the aid of God’s people. Those who have been faithful to God will escape the “unsurpassed distress” that will ensue when God comes to set things right. Those faithful, the “wise,” who have died will awake to live “like the stars forever” (perhaps referring to the heavenly host of angels). The unfaithful, however, will endure the everlasting disgrace merited by their wickedness.

Having established that Christ’s priesthood is perfect and that this priesthood now makes the older system unnecessary, Hebrews goes on to discuss the implications of this for believers. Christ’s sacrifice makes possible not only the forgiveness of sins, but actual salvation. The older sacrifices could atone for sins, but they could not take them away, as Christ’s does. This leaves the believers fundamentally changed, and now they are (potentially, at least) “made perfect forever.” Christ himself is now in the presence of God, not only as intercessor, but as heir and conqueror of all the forces that oppose him, including sin itself.

The Gospel reading is sometimes called the Markan apocalypse, featuring as it does several standard tropes from Jewish apocalyptic literature. Apocalyptic thought looked forward to the day when God or God’s Messiah would defeat the evil forces that currently inhabit and corrupt the world. History and the world as we know them will come to an end, a new age will begin, and God’s sovereignty will be recognized by all. The Son of Man, an image derived from Daniel, represents the messianic figure who will bring judgment on the wicked and vindicate the righteous during the final days. The cosmic catastrophe at the beginning of the reading is the sign that the time has arrived, that the world is coming to an end, and a new era is beginning.