458. Thirty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time (B)
Meditations no. 623 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
The glorious coming of Christ at the end of time.
JESUS CHRIST fully fulfilled the mission that the Father had entrusted to him. His passage on earth ended with his passion, death, resurrection and ascension into heaven. Now âhe is seated at the right hand of the Fatherâ But his work, the work of Redemption, must be applied to all men, until the end of the world. Only then, as the Church confesses, will Christ come a second time, glorious and triumphant, âto judge the living and the dead; and his kingdom will have no endâ. The Catechism of the Catholic Church specifies that âfrom the Ascension, the advent of Christ in glory is imminent (cf. Rev 22:20) even though it is not our place to know the time and the moment that the Father has fixed with his authority (Acts 1:7; cf. Mk 13:32). This eschatological advent can be fulfilled at any time (cf. Mt 24:44; 1 Thess 5:2), even if such an event and the final trial that will precede it are âheldâ in the hands of God (cf. 2 Thess 2:3-12)â.
Now that there are only a few days left before the end of the liturgical year, the first reading of the Mass presents us, with a text from the prophet Daniel, the events that will take place at that last moment in history, known as the Lordâs Day.
At that time Michael, the great prince who is at the head of the children of your people, will arise; it will be a time of trouble, such as has not been since no nation began until that time. And at that time your people will be saved, all who are written in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to eternal life, some to shame, to eternal ignominy. The wise will shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who taught many righteousness, like the stars, for all eternity.
It is the portentous event that will take place at the end of time. A unique and extraordinary event. The heavenly court, headed by the Archangel Michael, will be shown in all its splendor. The bodies of men will be resurrected and, united with the souls with whom they were in solidarity, they will receive the deserved reward according to Godâs just judgment. The âwise men,â as the biblical text designates them-that is, those who understood the meaning of life here on earth and persevered to the end teaching others the ways of God-will attain an ineffable glory, which will last for all eternity.
Saint Paul, who had received special light in understanding this mystery of the Lordâs second coming, writes in his first letter to the Thessalonians, with familiar images, words that caused great joy to the recipients of his letter and continue to do so to Christians of all times. He declares that, in those final circumstances so unique in history, when the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God give the signal, the Lord himself will descend from heaven; and all the just, both those who are then resurrected and those who are still alive, will go to meet the Lord to be always with him.
With this graphic language, the Apostle expresses the reintegration of our whole being, soul and body, in its unity, and the fullness of life and happiness that the righteous will enjoy forever in union with God. This coming of Jesus will be a source of joy for all those who loved him at his first coming, for those who await his return, and for those who have suffered or suffer for obeying him and being faithful to him. They will rejoice when they see the sign of the Son of Man coming in the clouds, because Christ will say to them: come, you blessed of my Father, take possession of the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. Our Father reminds us: âHe will come to judge the living and the dead,â we pray in the Creed. âMay you not lose sight of that judgment and that justice and⌠that Judge.
Hope in the coming of the Lordâs Day.
THE SECOND coming of Christ is frequently designated in Sacred Scripture by the Greek term parousia, a word that in the profane language of the time signified the solemn entry of an emperor into a city or province, where he was greeted as the savior of that land. That moment, in itself great and solemn, which always had something unexpected, was experienced as a great day of rejoicing, the beginning of a new stage.
The hope of the Parousia of Christ was very lively among the first Christians. Violently persecuted, they fervently longed for the second advent of the Lord, in the certainty that this world could not be the definitive homeland. They waited for Christ to arrive triumphant and glorious to establish definitively his kingdom of justice, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. This lively desire to attain eternal glory and to participate with the other righteous at that moment when they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds with great power and glory, moved them to voluntarily give their lives to win the palm of martyrdom.
We must attain to that divine wisdom possessed by those first brothers of ours in the faith, waiting with longing for the moment of the definitive encounter with God and to be able to contemplate the face of Jesus, which certainly, although not as far as our body is concerned, will already take place from the moment of death, if the Lord makes us worthy to attain eternal life. In Old Testament times, when revelation was not yet complete, the righteous expressed in the words of the Psalms the desire to contemplate the face of God: my soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When will I be able to go and see the face of God? At times they expressed the certainty of this fact as a logical consequence of Godâs own fidelity to his promises: but I, in righteousness, will behold your face, and when I wake up I will be satisfied with your presence.
From the beginning, in the light of definitive revelation, Christians expressed their ardent desire to see the face of Christ: Come, Lord Jesus! Saint John, in the Apocalypse, hears this exclamation from the lips of the Church, and the Lordâs answer: Yes, I am going quickly. This invocation - come, Lord Jesus! - was repeated by the faithful of apostolic times in the Lordâs mother tongue - Marana tha-, as Saint Paul reflects in one of his letters.
In our day, this urgent expression has remained one of the possible acclamations of adoration at Holy Mass, after the Consecration, when Christ has truly made himself present on the altar. With it we express the desire to see him one day in his glory, without the sacramental veils that now hide his presence from our eyes. For this reason, John Paul II hoped âthat the Churchâs passionate invocation: come, Lord Jesus, may become a spontaneous sigh of your heart, never satisfied with the present, because it tends to the ânot yetâ of the promised fulfillmentâ.
We express the same thing when we recite the Lordâs Prayer, the Lordâs Prayer, when we say in the second invocation: Thy Kingdom come. With these words, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, we formulate principally our desire for âthe final coming of the Kingdom of God through the return of Christ (cf. 2:13)â; a desire, the Catechism continues, âwhich does not distract the Church from her mission in this world, but rather compromises her. For, since Pentecost, the coming of the Kingdom is the work of the Spirit of the Lord, âin order that he may sanctify all things by bringing to completion his work in the worldââ.
These are two aspects that cannot be separated in the life of a Christian: the living hope and the longing for the hereafter, with the commitment to live today and now with full responsibility for the task that God has entrusted to each one. Our Father expressed this faith of the Church in this way: I am happy with the certainty of Heaven that we will attain, if we remain faithful to the end; with the joy that will come to us, quoniam bonus (Ps 105:1), because my God is good and his mercy is infinite. This conviction prompts me to understand that only what is marked with Godâs footprint reveals the indelible sign of eternity, and its value is imperishable. For this reason, hope does not separate me from the things of this earth, but brings me closer to these realities in a new, Christian way, which seeks to discover in the whole relationship of fallen nature with God the Creator and with God the Redeemer.
The Holy Eucharist is the seed of the future glory that we await, also in the body.
IN ORDER that this journey of ours, hopeful, longing for the Lordâs Second Coming and our future glory, might become more attainable, Christ left us the gift of the Eucharist, âthe sacrament of piety, the sign of unity, the bond of charity, the paschal banquet in which Christ is received, the soul is filled with grace, and we are given the pledge of future glory.â The Eucharist, in fact, is not only the delicacy of the angels and the bread of heaven, in which Christ truly gives himself as food for the soul on its way to God - which in itself is an inestimable gift - but it is also a pledge of future glory; that is, a tangible sign that Jesus himself placed in our hands, assuring us that in Communion we would obtain a foretaste of glorious life and the guarantee of attaining it, if we are faithful to his word. This is what he said clearly in the synagogue of Capernaum, to the amazement of his hearers: âHe who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. ⌠This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread that the fathers ate and died: whoever eats this bread will live forever.
The Old Testament tells us that the prophet Elijah, fleeing from Queen Jezebel, who was looking for him to kill him, received food from the hands of an angel of the Lord, who offered him bread and water, a prefiguration of the Eucharist. And with the strength of that meal, the sacred text says, he walked forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God. That bread gave him strength and encouragement for the long journey.
The Eucharist sustains us in our present journey, strengthens us to overcome the obstacles that appear in our journey towards God; but it also, even now, plants a seed of immortality in our hearts, because in it we receive the glorious Christ. Jesus, while applying to us the fruits of his passion - reconciliation with the Father - communicates to us the seed of his resurrection: a new, immortal, happy and eternal life with God. For this reason, some Fathers of the Church have designated this sacrament as âthe medicine of immortality, an antidote not to die, but to live forever in Jesus Christâ. And St. Irenaeus teaches: âJust as the grain of wheat falls into the earth, it decomposes, and then it rises, multiplies into ears of grain and nourishes us⌠so our bodies, nourished by the Eucharist and deposited in the earth, where they will suffer decomposition, will one day rise and be clothed with immortalityâ.
The fact that the Holy Eucharist is the first fruits of our glorification and resurrection explains its intrinsic relationship with the second coming of the Lord. When history is over, there will no longer be any need to receive the Eucharistic sacrament or the other sacraments, because we will see God face to face, without veils and without mysteries, without the need for hopeful signs. Just as after physical death follows the glorification of the souls of the just, so, on the day of the Lordâs second coming, the bodies of the righteous will also be glorified.
Let us ask Mary Most Holy that we may never lose the joy that she had, and that which the Apostles experienced, when they saw the risen Jesus; and that when he comes to be glorified in his saints and to show himself admirable in all who believed, we too may be welcomed into the joy of his eternity.