A Homily for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

+ “When you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place…flee to the mountains… For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be…and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory; and He will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”
 
These stark words of Our Lord ‘interrupt’ us and our daily occupations and pursuits, as it were, with the clear teaching that the world as we know it will come to an end—not without great tribulation—and that He, the Son of man, as the Creed puts it “shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” This is a doctrine of the Catholic faith—not an optional cultural belief. This world will end. All those who have lived, and those who are still alive, shall be judged based upon that judgement our eternal destiny of heaven or hell shall be determined.
 
Like a good mother, through her Sacred Liturgy, the Church insists that we do not forget this reality. It is easy and it is right to be busy with our life and vocation and family, etc., and to become absorbed in the mission of the Church and the conversion of ourselves and of the world—these are important and good things, certainly. So too, it is very easy to become engulfed by the ephemeral details of this world—things that truly do not matter. Yet, whether our daily occupations are truly important or not, the Church insists that today we remember very clearly that all these things shall come to an end, that we shall be judged according to how we have lived our lives.
 
How are we to respond to this reality? What can we do?
 
In the first place, it is important that we understand clearly what we must not do. We must not become so obsessed by this fact that we join the ranks of those many people in history—sometimes sad, sometimes amusing, sometimes dangerous—who have become so obsessed about the end times and on insisting that the end of the world is imminent that they have become unable to live the life to which Almighty God calls them here and now. Yes, the world will end. But we “know neither the day nor the hour” when these things will come to pass (Mt 25:13). If we decide that in fact we personally do know that the world is about to end, we risk committing the sin of presumption. We risk falling into the trap of the devil who seeks to distract us from the daily good we can and must do in persevering in our God-given vocation by tempting us to adopt an apocalyptic anxiety that paralyses us.
 
Yes, certainly, the sight of a pope and cardinals and bishops venerating a statue of a South American pagan goddess in the Vatican reeks of the abomination of desolation of which both the prophet Daniel and Our Lord Himself spoke—as have many other events in history, including many unspeakable liturgical abuses in our own era. But we have no right to presume that this or that is the sign that the world is about to end.
 
Our Lord calls us to be vigilant, to watch and be alert, certainly. But He does not call us to become paranoid. Yes, our watchfulness may well raise alarm when it sees all that is about us in the world, and at times in the Church. But that alarm should not paralyse us: it should motivate us to more resolute and urgent action. If the Church and the world are in crisis, I must do more in so far as I can to remedy these crises—in the first place, by ensuring that my own heart, mind and soul are in order. For crises redouble when those who deal with them are themselves lacking in integrity.
 
Are the times in which we live alarming? Might this be the beginning of the end? If so, my first response must be to attend to the purification and conversion of my own life, and of that of those for whom I have responsibility. Then, purified and fortified with the grace of the sacraments, we shall be able to face whatever comes.
 
Our Lord does instruct us to “flee to the mountains” at the onset of the abomination of desolation. In Sacred Scripture mountains, of course, represent a place that is close to God—where one can converse with Him directly, where He reveals Himself, etc. Hence, Our Lord instructs us to flee to be closer to God in times of great trouble and anxiety in the world, and in the world of our own lives. We cannot all enter monasteries—though these times do give it a certain attraction!—but we can all take refuge in fervent daily prayer, in the frequent reception of the sacraments, and in the exercise and witness of lives of charity in our homes and places of work. If we are thus daily close to God, we need have no fear.
 
Indeed, Our Lord teaches us that in the end He will come in triumph to gather His elect. Out task is to remain amongst the elect, and to do all that we can that others too are with us on that day.

As we approach His altar this morning let us beg for the courage and strength necessary so to do, in the confident hope that when the  Son of man comes with power and great glory for us it shall be no cause for alarm, but a day of great rejoicing. +