He is Coming

Thirty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

When I had just arrived in a former parish, I faced my first hurdle - communicating with the sacristan who was a foreign national. He had a strange way of speaking by conflating time - past, present and future - in a single continuous tense, a perpetual “now.” One day, he called me on my off day and told me that a visiting priest was “coming already.” I then asked him for specifics. He kept repeating “coming already.” To my chagrin, I wasn’t able to decipher his message. I eventually called my assistant to speak to him and hopefully he would have some better luck. He fared better and told me that the visiting priest “had already come” in the morning and left since he didn’t get a chance to meet me. This memory has always stayed with me when I recall how the end time prophecies of our Lord appear to have the same strange way of being perceived - past, present and future - all flow into a single continuous “now.”

Though the future destruction of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem would have been prophesied by our Lord during His lifetime, the gospel of St Luke was most likely written after this cataclysmic event. Both the destruction of the Temple and persecution of Christians were regarded as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies about “the Day of the Lord,” which we heard in the first reading. But when these events happened, they were also confirmation of the prophecy of the Lord. For those living through these times, these events were confirmation that they were living in the end times, the last days. The level of panic and fear would have been off the scale, with many feeling hapless and lost in despair. This is the reason why the eschatological message of scriptures is meant to provide courage and consolation and not meant to instil more fear or add to the anxiety of the listener.

If you were to take a closer look, the prophecy of our Lord can be divided into three parts. Though these three parts appear seamless and all seem to point to a future event, the first-generation reader of the gospel would have known that these different parts refer to different stages of the spectrum of time and history - past, present and future. With regards to the destruction of the city, this is a past event that has already happened which confirms the veracity of the words of our Lord. But when the Lord begins to list down a sample list of cataclysmic events which are both man-made and the result of natural disasters, He seems to be moving to an event or a series of events in the unknown future. Finally, this passage speaks to the reader in his current condition - he is a subject of persecution, alienation and humiliation, which the early Christian community were experiencing in the first Christian century and throughout the history of the Church.

Though the timeline seems to be blurred and any reader could easily apply the prophecy to his current situation and time (especially with regards to persecution and disasters, both natural and man-made), what the passage wishes to emphasise here is that we should not be distracted by these “signs.” This seems to be the issue with the disciples of the Lord as well as Christians of every generation - we get so caught up with the pyrotechnics, with the “signs,” and fail to see that all these things seek to highlight the only thing which matters - or to be more accurate, the only person that matters, Our Lord Jesus Christ. All “signs” point to Him, who should be our sole focus.

The “end times” may sound like an epoch in time or an event in history but it is really about a person - our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of History, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, and all times and seasons belong to Him. So, are we in the end times? The answer is simple and complex. Yes. We are living in the “end times” but it began over two thousand years ago with the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are in the end times and this period of salvation history will continue until Christ’s triumphant return in glory at His Second Coming. Every generation has signs of suffering, apostasy, and renewal. But these are not signs that the end is near but a call to repentance and to grow in holiness and fidelity to our Lord. In the face of disaster, hardship and persecution, we Christians need only to remember our Lord’s words at the end of today’s passage: “Your endurance will win you your lives.”

So, there is no need for us to speculate when our Lord will return, because no one knows the day or the hour in which Christ will return in glory. But we can be certain that He will return in glory to judge the living and the dead and that His return will herald the end and final complete defeat of all His enemies - suffering, sin, death, and the power of evil. We cannot live in denial of evil. Evil is real but so is the power of good, the power of God. In fact, the good is more real because evil is always destructive, always negative, always corrupting. Whereas the good creates, builds, grows, nurtures, comforts, enhances, heals. The good news of Jesus Christ is that evil does not triumph, cannot triumph, and so we do not have to fear. We can look in the face of evil—as so many Christian martyrs have done and do even today—and persevere in loving the good. This is a promise of hope, not a threat of destruction.

Christ will return in glory at the end of time to judge the living and the dead. There will be a resurrection of the body, and God’s justice and mercy will be fully revealed. This is the true meaning of the end of the world—not fear of cosmic disaster but confident hope in the ultimate triumph of our Lord Jesus Christ. Rather than becoming preoccupied with signs and speculations, Catholics are called to live in a state of grace, anchored in the sacraments, guided by Sacred Scripture, and sustained by the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. We do not need to fear the end. We belong to a Church that already knows how the story ends: Christ is victorious as He was “in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”