Jesus Christ Really Did Come In The Flesh And Is Coming Again

Friday of the thirty-second week in course 2024

Let’s spend a moment with our Gospel passage to find from Church teaching what Jesus is not saying by way of St. Luke. There is a school of Christian thought that was popularized in the Left Behind series of books and flicks. It’s called millennialism. I believe it works off a handful of passages in the New Testament. Remember that Jesus promised through Matthew that He would be with us “always to the end of the age.” Christians who understand the Eucharist believe that Jesus is present—at least in some way—during the thanksgiving celebration Catholics call the Mass, and that His presence is through the bread and wine consumed in Communion. Others do not believe that and emphasize Christ’s presence by His second coming in glory, which could be at any moment. (Actually, all Christians should believe that.)

Millennialism teaches that this immanent return will be in the sky, with trumpets blaring, and that the invisible Church, made up of all truly faithful Christians, will be individually snatched up and taken to be with Christ, leaving everyone else here. After this “rapture,” a time of terrible tribulation will be inflicted on the remaining people on earth. These teachers focus on phrases like “there will be two in one bed; one will be taken and the other left.” But the clear meaning of the whole passage makes most sense if we interpret the ones taken as the ones that don’t “make the grade” at the coming of Christ. They are the ones not being saved from the plague or whatever judgement is passed. That judgement most probably would be the separation that occurred at the end of the Jewish revolt, when Jerusalem fell, and the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD. The Christians, warned by Jesus forty years earlier, escaped across the Jordan and survived. As many as a million Jews, left behind, died or were sold into slavery by Rome.

The clear fact is that all humans need to make themselves ready by faith and good works to be ready at any time for the general judgement, the return of Christ. Then we will be ready for the particular judgement, when at our deaths Jesus will judge whether we are fit for the kingdom of God. That’s a daily decision we each must make by God’s grace.

With this in mind, we should pay better attention to John’s second letter, and his fervent plea to his readers to acknowledge “the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.” The deceiving men he refers to are likely the Gnostic teachers who considered our physical bodies as evil, and so denied the Incarnation, which is the breaking in of God the Son into His world by assuming our nature. Without that action, Jesus would not have been human and could not have raised our human nature into the Godhead, giving us the opportunity for salvation and divinization. We need to be adopted children of God to fulfill God’s original plan for us. His enfleshment is necessary for that to happen. That’s why the coming season of Advent and the solemnity of Christmas are important celebrations in our annual calendar. It has nothing to do with chimneys and chestnuts. Those are just ornaments. “Anyone who goes ahead and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God; he who abides in the doctrine has both the Father and the Son.” Blessed be His holy Name forever. Amen.