There are 33 years in Jesus’ life and 33 weeks in Ordinary Time in the Church. Soon we will celebrate the Feast of Christ the King, and then the cycle starts over with Advent.
But first comes the Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, the dramatic end of the liturgical year. The Gospel for the day is dire, insisting that the end really is coming, and we should be ready for it. Here are takeaways from the readings from previous This Sunday columns.
First: Jesus is revealing the end game of Christianity.
In the Gospel Jesus speaks about a tribulation, after which “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.” But then “the Son of Man” will come “in the clouds with great power and glory.” The angels will be sent out to gather his “elect.”
Jesus speaks these words in Holy Week in the Gospel of Mark. Thus, they come at the crisis point in Christ’s life, on the eve of his death. He enters Jerusalem in Mark, Chapter 11, and immediately three strange things happen. First, he cleanses the Temple, overturning tables and chasing away the merchants, then he curses a fig tree for not having fruit.
What follows in Mark’s Gospel is Jesus spelling out how those lessons about the Temple and the fig tree will play out in real time. After pressing his case against the Jewish leaders, he uses the symbolic language of Daniel, whose book was popular in his day, to say that earthly powers will fall and only his power will remain.
And how will his power remain? The Church is the new Temple, and its sacraments are the new Tree of Life that produces fruits in us. The Second Reading explains it: Christ “offered one sacrifice for sins, and took his seat forever at the right hand of God … For by one offering he has made perfect forever those who are being consecrated.”
Second: The lessons Jesus gives here have been distilled in the Catechism’s teaching about the Last Judgment.
Though “Christ the Lord already reigns through the Church,” the Catechism says, “all the things of this world are not yet subjected to him.” There will be a final assault by the powers of evil, after which will come “the triumph of Christ’s kingdom,” the Church.
We won’t automatically land a place on Jesus’s team, however, simply by being members of his Church, St. Ambrose warns.
The darkening of the sun will come because many Catholics will love “this life” more than the next, Ambrose says. “Also the stars, that is, men surrounded by the praise of their fellow Christians, shall fall, as the bitterness of persecution mounts up,” he adds, “for so the good are proved and the weak made known.”
Sunday’s First Reading, from the Book of Daniel, fills in more details. “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.”
Those of us who put ourselves and our own self-aggrandizement at the center of our lives will be banished in our hideousness, while the faithful will “shine brightly” and “shall be like the stars forever.”
But third: We can also take great consolation in this reading.
In much of the world (and, truth be told, much of the Church) a belief in a benign, automatic afterlife persists. We imagine our loved ones are “in a better place,” “looking down on us” and “always with us” while they enjoy whatever they liked most on earth.
The Disney/Pixar movie Coco spells out how this works in the popular imagination by showing us a place where the dead party until they are forgotten on earth, and then disappear. Give this a moment’s thought and it is horrifying: It tells us that every soul but a precious few are doomed, because the truth is, we forget nearly all of our own relatives nearly all of the time. Even the best loved family members and most famous celebrities fade into obscurity and are forgotten. Each of us will be quickly forgotten on earth.
This Sunday’s Gospel is far more hopeful. It tells us that no one is forgotten by the one who created us, died for us, and went to prepare a heavenly mansion for us that is more satisfying than the greatest mansions on earth.
Fourth: It’s important to note that this Sunday’s Gospel reading is popular among Bible debunkers.
But at the same time, skeptics see this as a pipe dream, and vocal detractors such as Bart Ehrman propound the theory that this Gospel reading shows that Jesus was mistaken. His words “This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place,” show that Jesus expected this apocalyptic event to happen right away. Later, the theory goes, other Gospel writers had to rewrite the story.
But what Jesus says always has layers of meaning. When he says the fig tree should be fruitful, for instance, he means that the Jewish people should be fruitful, and also that the coming Church should be fruitful, and also that each of us alive in the 21st century should be fruitful. These meanings are not at odds with each other, but in harmony with each other.
Here, his warning about this event has several meanings as well. It is a warning that the Temple faces destruction — which it saw in the year 70 A.D. when the unthinkable happened and the “heavens” housed in the Temple were torn down by attacking Romans. That means his words about “this generation” were literally true for those who heard him the first time — but also true for us, who will not pass into non-existence but will witness these events.
Fifth: These readings give us a clear To Do List for this time of year.
Outside our windows, the days are growing darker, the landscape is growing bleaker and winter is looming. When cold is coming, we stay close to the fire; when darkness is coming, we stay by the light. With judgement coming, we should stay close to Christ.
We know how: First, you can’t be close to someone you don’t talk to. Pray the Rosary every day, go to Adoration each week if you can, and each morning follow the ABCS of prayer.
Second, meet Jesus in his sacraments: Go to confession regularly, and receive him in the Blessed Sacrament, savoring his Real Presence in your life.
Third, lead others to Jesus: It’s a daily duty to evangelize. Don’t believe that people don’t want to hear about Jesus; they do. You can even (carefully) evangelize your own family members.
After all, Jesus is all that will remain when everything else dies away. And make no mistake: Everything else will die away.
Image: Creazilla; Stefan Lochner,
Last Judgement, circa 1435
