Last Sunday after Pentecost
On this last Sunday of the liturgical year, Holy Mother Church puts before our eyes the spectacle of the end of the world and the final judgment. The two major elements of this teaching are that the world as we know it will end, and that Christ Our Lord will come to judge all of humanity.
The universe was created by God. Its only goal is to lead souls to eternal salvation, which in turn gives greater glory to the Creator. That’s all. It serves no other purpose. The universe has no other raison d’être. It does not suffice unto itself. It is good, very good, but only inasmuch as it is understood as being part of a much larger plan. Modern discoveries have allowed us to come to a better knowledge of the dimensions of the universe. Its magnitude leaves us in awe. And yet, it is nothing at all compared to God and what God has in store for His loved ones. The whole of creation is totally insignificant compared to the destiny of a single elect soul, called to see God face to face for all eternity.
As St John saw in the Apocalypse, the heavens and the earth were swept away; they were gone. All that remained were, on one side, God and the souls that comprise the eternal Jerusalem, and on the other, the pool of fire and brimstone in which will burn forever those who refuse to be part of God’s plan. Revelation tells us then that the universe was created by God and that God will bring it to an end; He will “pull the curtain” at the moment He has determined. In other words, it is not just a matter of the solar system wearing itself out eventually or a comet colliding with the Earth and making it uninhabitable. No, God has told us that, when the number of the elect is complete, He will step in to put an end to human history. Just as He initiated its beginning by creation, so He decides the moment of its ending in His sovereign will.
When will this be? We do not know. It will be at a time when we least expect it. And yet, the Lord has given us numerous signs to look for: the natural signs that startle us, the apostasy of the nations, the turning away from God, the persecution of the faithful, the ultimate conversion of the Jews, and the reign of the Antichrist. In St Paul’s second epistle to the Thessalonians, he tells us: That day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God (2 Th 2:3-4). Those words refer no doubt to the Antichrist, who will pass himself off as if he were the Christ, and receive divine worship even in the Temple of God. While we can expect this prophecy to be fulfilled to the letter, we can certainly say that whenever human beings put something else in the place of God, they are already doing a dress rehearsal for the reign of the Antichrist.
The temptation to do just that has always been there. We know from antiquity that some Roman Emperors had themselves proclaimed gods and demanded that everyone prostrate themselves before them. But there are more subtle ways of making yourself god. One of them is very much at work today in the Church. It consists of efforts to change what God has revealed to us and to establish a different moral code from the one He has decreed.
Regarding the first, it was epitomised by the Modernist heresy, still very much alive, which consists essentially in proclaiming that since all things are evolving, so is truth. What was true yesterday may not be so tomorrow. We therefore have no solid basis for our faith, but are left as St Paul said to the Ephesians, like children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes (Eph 4:14). The Modernist heresy thus opens up the Church to every possible form of perversion. It thereby subjects the faithful to the tyranny of those in power. Regarding the second, it is all too evident for anyone with eyes that there is a concerted effort within the Church to establish a new moral code, and the sovereign law of that code would simply be to leave all moral judgments to the individual. God’s law means nothing anymore. It is replaced by man’s feelings, and so we have man sitting himself in the throne of God, pretending that he is God. That is the abomination of the desolation that we have before our eyes at this time.
So we can say that this prophecy is already in the process of being fulfilled today. What then are we to do? Our Lord tells us: When therefore you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place: he that readeth let him understand. Then they that are in Judea, flee to the mountains: he that is on the housetop, let him not come down to take any thing out of his house: And he that is in the field, let him not go back to take his coat (Mt 24:15-18). St Jerome comments: “Then will be the time when it will be our duty to flee from Judea into the mountains, that is to say, to hide in the everlasting hills, from whence God doth wondrously cause His light to shine forth. Then it will be out duty to find ourselves under a roof and in a house where the fiery darts of the wicked one can never pierce and smite us, and not to come down to take anything out of the house of our old life, or to have regard unto those things which are behind but rather to sow in the field of the spiritual Scriptures”. In other words, in these days in which the abomination of the desolation seems to be set up in the very house of God, we must more than ever take refuge in frequent prayer, reading and meditating the Holy Scriptures, avoiding even the appearance of sin which would take us back to our old ways and compromise us with the very abomination we are fleeing. In the days of the great trial, there can be no compromise. Let us then flee to the mountain which is Christ and take refuge under the mantle of Mary Immaculate, Co-Redemptrix of the Human Race and Mediatrix of All Grace.
In the midst of the sadness that weighs upon us as we read Our Lord’s words today, especially as we sense that we may very well be living them out, there are several encouragements in today’s Gospel that we need to turn our minds to. First of all, the Lord says: See that ye be not troubled. For these things must come to pass (Mt 24:6). In a similar way, at the Last Supper, twice in the same chapter 14 of St John, the Saviour says: Let not your heart be troubled. It is an act of love and of the greatest esteem and confidence in the Lord when we are able to obey that command: Be not troubled. It reminds us of St Teresa’s famous words: “Let nothing disturb thee, let nothing affright thee, all things are passing, God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Nothing is wanting to him who possesses God. God alone suffices.” Yes, the cosmos is being rolled up like a canvas; soon, it will all be over. All that will matter is that when we stand before the judgement seat of Jesus Christ, we be able to say in all truth that we sought in all things to heed His sacred words, that we obeyed His commandments, regardless of any pressure of any kind from anyone, for we loved Him more than our own lives, more than our commodities and even our reputation.
Finally, for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened (Mt 24:22). Yes, the Lord, in His infinite mercy, shortens the days of the trial. God has set a limit to the sea, allowing it to go only so far. So He sets a limit to the time of evil, to the time of injustice. The wicked prosper only for a time, and then they dry up like grass and are thrown into the fiery furnace. Then, like the bird from its cage, the just are set free. In those days, we shall sing with overflowing joy: Our soul hath been delivered as a sparrow out of the snare of the fowlers. The snare is broken, and we are delivered (Ps 123:7).