Mark 13:24 - 32
At my age I spend more time than I probably should thinking about my mortality. And when I don’t think about it, my wife reminds me because she is pushing to get everything ready so that when we die our children will not have to interrupt their busy lives to deal with funerals and getting the house ready to be sold and all that stuff. And it was about 15 years ago when the last sibling of my mother passed away. And of my high school graduating class about one fourth have moved on to the next life. My generation is passing away, like all those before it. And yet Jesus tells his apostles that “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. And if you were to read the whole chapter of Mark’s gospel, it would include the destruction of the temple, persecutions of Christians, and all these things happening in the heavens. Some of the things JEsus predicted did happen. The temple was torn down and hasn’t been rebuilt; there were wars and there still are; Christians were persecuted, then, now, and undoubtedly in the future as well.. But the sun did not darken and the moon failed to give it’s light. Jesus is promising his disciples that they would be around to witness his triumphant return; and I think that’s what he is promising to us as well. We are, after all, part of the generation composed of the baptized, the people who have become brothers and sisters of Jesus, adopted children of the father, and temples of the Holy Spirit. IN short, we in the church are the generation that will not pass away until His return will be there, at the end of time, being judged. Now some of us think about judgment as sitting in a courtroom with God passing sentence on us. Not so. We will be our own judges. And it’s fairly simple. We will simply be invited by the Father to surrender to his love. He will invite us to let go of everything that we thought was important while we lived on earth, so that we can enter fully into his embrace. We will be invited, as Jesus was, to surrender our very selves to God.
And that won’t be easy, because it means giving up control. For a creature with free will, that’s very difficult. Before time began when God created the angels, we’re told that a third of the angels, led by Lucifer, rebelled. Why? Because as the poet Milton expressed it, Satan would “rather reign in hell than serve in heaven”. And we see that Adam and Eve preferred being kicked out of paradise rather than obey God’s command not to eat the fruit of a certain tree. And we see King David, who had everything he could possibly want -- a kingdom, the friendship of God, several wives, tribute from his enemies -- he decided to break several commandments in order to take another man’s wife as his own. When you think about it, most of the bad things in the world happen because someone refuses to give up control, refuses to recognize that he is totally dependent, even for the next breath he takes, on God.
Contrast that with the Saints. A few days ago one of the saints we celebrated was Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity. She was a Carmelite nun who died at the age of twenty-six. She was a mystic and left several writings. Here’s one sentence: “my God, Trinity whom I adore, let me entirely forget myself that I may abide in you, still and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity; let nothing disturb my peace nor separate me from you, O my unchanging God, but that each moment may take me further into the depths of your mystery!” Her last words were “”I am going to light, to love, to life!’ Like many saints whose deaths were witnessed, she longed to surrender herself to God, completely and with no reservations.
So I’m probably somewhere between King David and Saint Elizabeth. I’m still trying to surrender my desire to be in control, my attachments to the good things of this world, and I doubt that I will be ready when the time comes. That’s what purgatory is all about. And that will be the pain of purgatory. We will have to let go of all our lesser loves in order to enter into God’s eternal love. It sounds easy, doesn’t it? God and eternity in heaven on the one hand, the little pleasures and attachments I have now on the other. But if it’s so easy, why aren’t we doing these things now? After all, we know what we are supposed to do.
We are in the month of November, when we remember the souls of those who have gone before us. We are near the end of the Church year, when we are supposed to think about the four last things -- death, judgment, heaven and hell. So let us give a little thought as we approach the last Sunday of the Church year, the feast of Christ the King, how we will greet him when he comes. Will we be fearful and look around for a place to hide? Or will we welcome him with open arms? And if we aren’t sure, what will we do about it?
