From the Sunday Note, with additional thoughts:
Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven,
when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble,
and the day that is coming will set them on fire,
leaving them neither root nor branch,
says the LORD of hosts.
But for you who fear my name, there will arise
the sun of justice with its healing rays.
Malachi 3:19-20a (4:1-2a in some Bibles)
We are all living in “the Last Days.”
What does this mean? Will the world end tomorrow? Perhaps. A sportswriter noted a couple of days ago that the Jets are playing well, “a sure sign the Apocalypse is here”—but historically that’s proven a very iffy sign.
Our unusually brief first reading this Sunday is from Malachi, last prophet to speak from the Old Testament books (turn the page and we are into Matthew’s Gospel). He puts it differently: the day of Judgment is coming when evil of every kind will receive its just, destructive reward, but for those who turn humbly to God, there will “arise” a Sun/Son of Justice who will heal and save lives.
In the Gospel reading from Luke, this “Sun” Jesus shines some light on these questions for his disciples. His perspective is his Father’s perspective—all places, times, and events are perpetually “present” to Him. What we experience sequentially, He sees whole, from beginning to end. Jesus is approaching the end of his earthly life, but the End is not yet. Many persons, and many more to come, will be invited to choose life in Christ. The magnificent Second Temple before them in Jerusalem is approaching the time of its destruction—a parallel to the end of Christ’s earthly life—so its destruction is also not the End. The coming wars, plagues, earthquakes, and the like, are not certain signs of The End. That End time will be as unlooked- for, as surprising, as Christ’s Resurrection.
Obviously, Jesus does not tell his followers all this to satisfy their curiosity. His message to them is entirely different: “Be prepared to suffer, and when you do suffer, persevere.”
Nothing about that has changed since he taught it. Many people throughout history since then have been seduced by false end times predictions by people hoping to dodge the suffering. In baseball terms, over 22 centuries such people are batting 0-for-500.
Christ’s truth is still the same: we must be prepared to suffer, and when we do suffer, we must persevere.
For further reflection:
As persons, we wake up and find ourselves in this life. We know we did not create ourselves. We did not exist before we existed and decide to enter this life we are living on earth. Well, all right, we are here, and it is clear we are here for a limited time: everyone dies. Jesus reveals that the pattern of life here can be preparation for entering a different– qualitatively different– kind of LIFE after our life here ends. That preparation we must go through works the same way everything in this life worth having works: preparation through stress, practice, suffering through difficulties and pains, followed by (this worldly) victories and satisfactions. To be a successful athlete, one must push oneself in training, straining to do our best. To learn a subject, one must put in hours of study and mental effort. To become a good cook, one must learn, and mix, and bake, and grow in knowledge and practice. To win a marriage partner means taking social chances of rejection, learning how to navigate relationships with the opposite sex, etc. etc. Stress, strain, practice, suffering–we must persevere through all of them for any goal.
Jesus is simply telling his disciples that to be eligible, to be ready, for the LIFE to come, we must persevere through the suffering that comes with living here and now as he teaches. At the same time, keep in mind that there are great joys in living in and with Christ, even now, as is true of all the this-life examples given above.