33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
When I was in grade school, 1954-62, I feared this time of the year. I dreaded listening to the apocalyptic readings because they scared me. At Mass, the priest would reinforce the imagery by speaking of the signs of the times. They were even more frightening than the prophecies – the Vietnam War, the People’s Revolution in China, and Cuba working with Russia to mount a nuclear attack against the U.S. Then, there was the ever-frightening secret letter the children at Fatima had given to the Pope to be read sometime in the future. Just everyday life frightened me; the end-of-the-year apocalyptic passages only fueled the fear.
I hope that the readings this weekend didn’t scare the child in you. As I matured and studied the bible, I came to realize that apocalyptic literature was a message of hope. The horrors they painted were symbolic of the events of the day. Daniel had survived the Babylonian deportation and the Persian conquest of the Babylonians. The Book of Daniel was written at the end of the reign of the Persian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, whose cruelty against the Jewish people was epic. Today’s gospel reading was written as Christian persecutions began under Emperor Nero and would continue off and on for two centuries.
This is the time of the year when we think about the end of the world we suffer in – the world of starvation, war, oppression, injustice, persecution. It’s the time of year when we lift up our world to God for judgment and purification. It’s the time of year when we remind ourselves that there’s still a lot of work for us. It’s the time of year that we renew our hope in the good deep in humanity’s heart. It’s the time we envision “a new heaven and a new earth.”
Let Us Pray:
Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay… Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete. Prayer from a Poem by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ
