Word to the Wise
Friday, December 1, 2006 - 34th Friday in Ordinary Time
[Revelation 20:1-4, 11-21:2 and Luke 21:29-33]Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
The vivid imagery of the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse) and the preaching about the end of time in the Gospel of Luke come together here at the end of the liturgical year. On Sunday, we will begin a new liturgical year with the celebration of the beginning of Advent! We are still here. Time and matter have not come to a crashing end. The story comes to an end by beginning. Yet, at both "ends" of the story the message is the same. It is a message of hope. Perhaps starting with the hope for a Messiah who comes to set things right on earth and ending with a Messiah who sets things right in a completely different dimension is a way of understanding the whole of the gospel message. Our old categories are brushed away by new ones. There are those who consider it a luxury to be meditating on "last things" when there is so much to be done in the present. There are others who find the present to be so unendurable and impossible that only a better future, however vivid and imaginary, can give comfort. Most of us will be somewhere in between, knowing that we must continue to love and serve till the Lord comes again. Like the Book of Revelation, we can imagine what it will be like, but at the moment, the kingdom of God exists in the love and care we show for the least of our brothers and sisters. AMEN