Unsurpassed In Distress

Thirty-Third Sunday in Course 2024

When I see the dread words about “a time unsurpassed in distress since nations began until that time,” there comes to mind from my own family’s history several events that were so advertised before they happened. In fact, we just completed an election cycle that featured both political parties using language like that about the possible election of their opponents. And without going back in memory even thirty years, many of us can recall when the turn of the new millennium was supposed to evoke that kind of language, because of the way older computer programs had read the year 2000. That turned into pretty much a “nothing burger” but twenty-one months later, evil men who thought they acted at the direction of God brought death and destruction in New York and Washington, an act that propelled the West into two bloody, expensive wars.

If we are not very careful, we could see today’s readings from God’s Word as panic-inducing warnings causing fear and hatred to spike our cortisol and orexin levels. That’s not good for health either for individuals or society. Take a deep breath and see that God, who is love and who wants us to be motivated by love, has truly Good News today.

First, we can affirm with the author of the Letter to the Hebrews that Jesus, truly God and truly man, offered in His death and resurrection--freely offered—the perfect sacrifice of atonement and reconciliation. Our sins can then be forgiven whenever we turn to God with repentance and true sorrow. And any sacrifice offered to God, whether the death of Christian martyrs still going on today, or any suffering we endure, then becomes one with that perfect sacrifice. When we some day give up this mortal life, by accident or illness or the act of evildoers, we need not be concerned about the ultimate end. Christ has, to appeal to a commercial allegory, “paid the price” and we can leave earthly life confident in our ultimate union with the Godhead.

Second, it is clear from the Gospels that there will be an end to the life of this world, but also that it will be in God’s time, unpredictable by any man. St. Mark records Jesus saying that there will be wars and earthquakes and other disasters, but that’s just the beginning. That’s been going on for two thousand years, along with the horrible persecutions Jesus foretold. (Check any reference for the word “Diocletian”). But the end, which will see Christ returning in glory, will come only when the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled: “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.” In other words, at the end God will reverse the creative energy manifest in the first book of the OT. The faithful will be gathered from the ends of the earth.

Third, since we have no idea when all these signs will manifest themselves, and when the Lord Jesus returns to gather us all and present us to the Father as His Bride, His Body, our duty is very clear. We must love God above all things and follow Christ’s call to love all our neighbors, helping them and bringing the love of God to them, especially the poor and forsaken.