The Last Things and the Lamb

Beginning on this first day of November, in this end of the liturgical year, we start a cycle of readings foreboding yet hopeful.

Ready or not, we will be forced to contemplate the 'Last Things': death, judgement, heaven and hell.

It is also the last cycle of chronos time. We can feel it in the autumn air. Now all is ending, all is dying. The fading warmth of summer’s light, the once verdant leaves all poured out to the last drop, slip away with each second, each moment, each day.

Chronos time is quantifiable and measurable. Like a train that can never de-rail, it is passing on a track from past to future. It is time in motion, always on the go. It is where we derive the English words chronic, chronicle and chronology. Chronos is the time we mean when we ask, ‘When?’ or ‘What time is it?’ Chronos time is time that we can measure and keep track of with calendars and clocks. One day it will run out. The chronos train will de-rail because it too is a creature that will one day die. But what happens when it does?

In November we begins to answer that question as we shift our focus from chronos to kairos time or what is commonly known as ‘God’s time’. It is not stuck in the present rather, it is the ‘eternal now’ where past, present, and future are in one unending moment. It is always now, no before or after. Kairos time is time from God’s point of view, which we typically call eternity at whose center stands a Lamb that appears to be slain. It is a time that never dies.

Now that we have placated the little demons owith their Halloween tribute, we think about our own death and what it means to have a sudden arrival into thaT eternity.

The readings on this All Saints day begin with the last book of the Bible because our Catholic Faith is teleological and eschatological. Whether we like it or not, whether it fits our personality or not, to be Catholic is to be goal oriented. Our goal is heaven.

Like conscientious wayfarers we take into account the map of the whole journey, the plan of God told in the mega-story of which our own puny story is only a small part. For we know that once we embark into the waters of Baptism, we find ourselves in an epic tale, an odyssey, a great adventure to be counted among one of Abraham’s ‘stars of the sky’ or ‘sands on a seashore’. 

We are but one speck of sand mixed with the multitudes of other sand saints grounded and polished clean by wave after pounding wave, in what Saint Faustina called the ‘Ocean of God’s Mercy’. What could be more epic than that? Afterall, Saint Paul told the Ephesians that we were chosen before the foundation of the world. To become holy and blameless as adopted children of God in Christ. We know how it all ends because our Lord wanted us to know. 

In a way, we who carry in us a distant memory of immortality and who are made to live forever, remember the future. We go ‘Back to the Future’ because the future is an unbreakable promise more certain than the daily rising of the sun. It has already been revealed with the certitude of divine inspiration and the foundation of the Word of God which is Truth itself. 

We know that everything before us and after us will culminate in the great gathering of everything good for everyone made holy in Christ. We can see it telescopically and totally through the eyes of Saint John as he unveils and unwraps the gift of  the consummation of space and time in the Book of Revelation. Like John, we who are in time, still offering ourselves day after day on the square altar of earthly martyrdom, dare to glimpse a vision of our saintly self in the timelessness of eternity, kneeling before the Lamb in the secret vastness of a new, infinite earth permeated with the order and joy of paradise. 

In hope we can see ourselves counted among the 144,000 and the uncountable multitudes from every nation, and with those who washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb and marked themselves with the seal of the holy cross. We who tasted the Eucharist in this life and knew the heavy weight of the cross of Christ will finally exude the beatitudes. We who, through the sacraments, were infused with supernatural gifts and virtues will be the single hearted ones. We who confessed our sins and repented for the sake of peace, will reap the fruit of Christian joy. We who sowed seeds in earthly mourning and who are persecuted, who hunger and thirst for a better world, one day will find ourselves in it. In the purity of our newly resurrected hearts we will see God as he is with no more veils, no more separation. 

We who are remembered by God will be compelled to a spirit of gratitude and inexpressible happiness. Like the good thief who asked Christ to simply remember him…when we realize that he meant it when he said, “today you will be with me in paradise”. 

This "today" of the living God which man is called to enter is "the hour" of Jesus' Passover, which reaches across and underlies all history: Life extends over all beings and fills them with unlimited light; the Orient of orients pervades the universe, and he who was "before the daystar" and before the heavenly bodies, immortal and vast, the great Christ, shines over all beings more brightly than the sun. Therefore a day of long, eternal light is ushered in for us who believe in him, a day which is never blotted out: the mystical Passover" (CCC 1165). 

A never ending All Saints day, this is the promise and this is our hope.