Are you ready for the call?

READY WHEN THE LORD COMES

Malachi 3:19-20; 2 Thess.3:7-12 & Lk.21:5-19

As the Church’s Liturgical year gradually draws to a close, the Scripture readings turn our attention to the Final Coming of Christ and to the events that will be associated with it.  Last Sunday, we reflected on the theme of the resurrection.  Today, we ponder on the awesome reality of God’s judgement to which every one of us will be subject.  We profess our belief in this truth each Sunday in the creed, when we say, “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead; and His Kingdom will never end.” 

So then, we know that our death will be followed immediately by a personal judgement and purgatory, if necessary.  At the end of time, there will be the resurrection, the General Judgement and our eternity either in heaven or in hell.  What happens at the General Judgement will simply be a public manifestation of what has already taken place at our personal judgment. 

The Christ who will come to meet us at our death and at the end of time is the same Christ who comes to us in the Eucharist and in the daily events of our lives.  The outcome of the Last Judgement will, therefore, depend on how our daily actions acquit us or convict us in the presence of Christ.  What truths, then can we learn from Christ’s teaching about His Second Coming, and how can we apply them to our daily encounter with Christ?

The Second Coming of Christ will be a time when the people of this world of all ages are sorted into two groups:  those who are for Christ and those against.  The prophet Malachi, the last of the Old Testament prophets, describes this sorting process in terms of a symbolic sorting agent, namely, fire.  If wood and paper are mixed with the precious metals, the blazing fire will burn up the wood and the paper, reducing them to ashes, while it leaves the gold and the silver purified and intact.  So it will be at the end of time.  The arrogant and the wicked will experience God’s judgement as a consuming fire; whereas the virtuous will experience it like a therapeutic radiation which heals, strengthens and makes them resplendent.  Judgement, therefore, involves a crisis, that is, a sorting and a decision. 

This is true also of our daily events, even though technically we do not call them crises except when they are of a large magnitude; but big or small, they are crises all the same, because every event presents us with an opportunity to decide either for Christ, or against Him.  With the help of the Holy Spirit, we have to make that choice, cutting away what is sinful and holding on to what is of Christ.  If we make this choice consistently throughout our lives, then, at the Last Judgement we will be found to be on the side of Christ.

Prior to the Second Coming of Christ, we are warned that there will be people who mislead others by claiming to be Christ, and saying, “I am He”, “The time is at hand.”  This deceiver is called the Antichrist in the First Letter of John and the “beast” or the “False Prophet” in the Book of Revelation.  Our Lord explicitly cautions us not to be deceived by such false claims, but to remain faithful to Him. 

In our daily lives, too, during moments of crisis, false solutions present themselves under an attractive guise, tempting us to take the seemingly easy way out.  The grass often looks greener on the other side of the fence, and so the tendency to escape into a world of illusion by indulging ourselves in work, or food, or alcohol or sex.  For example, a priest or a religious who is struggling with loneliness may experience a strong urge to “drown his sorrows” in alcohol or sex – voyeurism, masturbation, or even running away to live with another person.  Similarly, a married person who is experiencing difficulties in his or her own marriage may feel like starting an extra marital affair. 

All of these are deception which seek to thwart our call to face the crisis squarely and work through it with God’s grace.  If, however, we hold firm and remain faithful to the Lord despite all the pain, they will emerge from the crisis healed, strengthened and sanctified.

The Lord’s coming will also be preceded by a lot of suffering for the faithful, indeed a time of persecution and division.  Sometimes, the hostility will be from members of our own family and friends.  It may be, for example, that we could not accede to their request because the request was not in accordance with the Lord’s teaching.  The pain comes from the fact that we have to choose between pleasing our loved ones and pleasing God.  This can be an extremely painful choice.  Not that we do not love our dear ones, but that our love for God has an overriding priority which makes us let go of others for His sake. 

I am sure we have experienced situations like this in our daily lives.  It could, for example, be a request from a spouse to evade Income Tax or to practise artificial birth control.  It is in refusing such requests that we meet the Cross, and we have to be prepared to do that.  We cannot be disciples of Christ without embracing the Cross at every stage of our lives.  But if, with God’s grace, we accept our crosses and remain firm in our commitment, then we are behaving like the martyrs who laid down their lives for Christ.  We can then be sure of rising to new life through this crisis.

The Day of the Lord will come upon us like a thief in the night.  We know neither the time of our death nor the time of the Final Coming of Christ.  This is true also of our daily encounters with Christ.  Just as an athlete must maintain himself in a state of physical fitness, so also we should be spiritually fit and alert enough to meet each occasion as it arises.  We might remember the instances when we fell into sin simply because we were not ready to resist a temptation which caught us unawares.  Conversely, we might recall incidents where we missed an opportunity for doing good, again because we were not ready to rise to the occasion. 

Vigilance, therefore, is vitally important in our spiritual lives.  That does not mean, however, that we drop all our ordinary activities and live in idleness.  This is why St. Paul rebuked some of the Thessalonians in today’s Second Reading.  These people had adopted the mentality of idleness.  “Why bother to work if the Lord is going to come soon, anyway?”  St. Paul instructs such people not to be nosey or interfering, but to go on earning their livelihood through honest work.  We, too, must work cheerfully and conscientiously at our employment, while in our hearts we await with readiness and expectancy for the coming of Our Lord in the daily events.

Our behaviour in the daily events of our lives is a rehearsal for the judgement on that Final Day of the Lord.  In every crisis, let us make a conscious choice of Christ, accepting the pain that is involved with courage and by refusing to be deceived by an escape route consisting of false and sinful solutions. 

Lord Jesus, as we go about our daily tasks, let us maintain our hearts in a state of constant vigilance through regular prayer and the Sacraments, so that we are always ready to avoid sin and to do good.

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