In all generations there are people who speculate about the end of the world. It seems to me that we have had more than our share of doomsayers in the 21st Century. There was Y2K January 1, 2000 when nothing happened. Then Richard Noone declared that the world would end on May 5, 2000 with a global ice age but the sun came out on May 6. In 2006 Ronald Weinland announced that the world would collapse in 2008. The Mayan Calendar controversy happened in 2012. Some people believed that the world would end in 2015 but we are still here. More recently there were claims that the world would end on July 29, 2016, October 31, 2016, January 1, 2017 and most recently September 25, 2022. Don’t hold your breath.
Sometime around A.D. 51-52 St Paul was forced to remind the Christians in Thessalonica “not to be shaken out of your minds suddenly, or to be alarmed either by a “spirit, “or by an oral statement, or by a letter allegedly from us to the effect that the day of the Lord is at hand” (2 Thess. 2:2). He wrote this because some members of the community decided that the Second Coming of Jesus was imminent so they stopped working, expecting the community to take care of them. In today’s second reading we hear St Paul instruct the community that “if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat”(2 Thess. 3:10).
In today’s Gospel from Luke 21:5-19, Jesus reminded his followers and he reminds us to “See that you not be deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and ‘The time has come.’ Do not follow them! When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for such things must happen first, but it will not immediately be the end.” Bad things might happen to us as individuals but if we persevere in our faith we, like the people in our first reading from 445 BC Judah who listened to the prophet who called himself Malachi, will see “the sun of justice arise . . . with healing in its wings” (Mal 3:20).
O God, the beginning and the end of all things,
you fashion all humanity
into a living temple for your Son.
Through all of this life’s changes,
its joys and its sorrows,
may we hold fast to the hope of your kingdom,
certain that by our patient endurance
we will come to possess eternal life.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever.
AMEN.
