33rd Sunday Ordinary Time November 17, 2024

Readings: Daniel 12:1-3  Hebrews 10:11-14, 18  Mark 13:24-32

Although we do not generally spend a lot of time thinking about the end of the world or about what will happen when the world ends. Obviously, my world ends when I die—at least in some sense. For those of us who believe in eternal life, the world does not end nor do I end. At my death, my own world is transformed. For all of us, this physical world as we know it will end some day, whether we are here or not. This is not some esoteric belief, but simply the facts that relate to physical matter.

The concern in the Scriptures today has two points: that everyone will be judged and that how we live now is important for the world to come. We hear first from the Book of Daniel about some kind of judgment or decision about those who have died. Some will awake, some will remain asleep and yet others will rise to a more terrible fate. In Mark’s Gospel today, the image is different. An angel goes and gathers all the elect. The fate of the non-elect, if there are any, is not spoken about.

Sometimes we forget that our actions now are in some mysterious way related to our life after death. Salvation is entirely a gift of God and yet the way that we live is still important. If God is every day inviting us to live His life and we are consistently refusing that invitation, why should we think it will be different in eternal life? If God is inviting us and every day we try to live His life, this is our goal.

God wants us. It is as simple as that. God invites us daily to accept His love. All of the literature about the end of the world and about judgment can be reduced to this: God wants us. God invites us to choose Him. If we try to respond, then our world is transformed. It does not matter if the world ends today: we are already with God.

                                                                                                                 Fr. Terry.