The Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Dear brothers and sisters,
The Prophet Malachi, the Psalmist, and the Lord Jesus all speak today about the end of the world, which is to say “the idea that human history will come to an end – will have a last act – [which] puts a huge strain on our imaginations.” This idea is quintessentially Christian because “the story of man is exactly that: a story, with a beginning, a middle, a climax, and an end. Because our history is a story, it has a meaning: it has a purpose, it is going somewhere.”[1]
We can surmise this meaning, this purpose, this destination of the story of our history in something very striking that the Lord Jesus says to us today, something both unexpected and that remains passionately tender. “Not a hair on your head will be destroyed,” he says (Luke 21:18). It was unexpected because not everyone believed in the resurrection of the dead. It remains touching because it shows how very much the Lord Jesus loves us; he loves us so much that he will not allow even a hair of our heads to be lost.
Saint Augustine - our great patron who possessed a towering intellect and a heart capable of profound emotion - understood the passionate love of the Savior for each individual person, perhaps in a manner few others have experienced. Because of this understanding, he was able to say:
We should have no doubt that our mortal flesh also will rise again at the end of the world…. This is the Christian faith. This is the Catholic faith. This is the apostolic faith. Believe Christ when he says, “Not a hair of your head shall parish” (Luke 21:18). Putting aside all unbelief, consider how valuable you are… He took on a soul and body in which to die for us, which he laid down for us when he died and which he took up again that we might not fear death.[2]
In this, we see that the beginning of the story of our history is founded in the love of God which led him to create the cosmos, and especially humanity. We see that the middle of the story of our history paradoxically lies almost at the beginning of our story but also runs throughout it: our turning our backs on the love of God. We see that the climax of the story of our history is found in the Crucifixion of Christ Jesus who poured out his love for us in a rather expected – and yet complete and perfect – way. And we see that the end of the story of our history lies in our being embraced into the love of the Triune God and being brought into union with Love Itself. We need not fear death because God who is Love – who has gone to such great lengths to demonstrate his love for us – is also Life Itself and in him there is no death.
And yet, in our weakness, we still have a tendency toward fear because we have not yet fully understood that for us who are united to Christ, “there will arise the sun of justice with its healing rays” (Malachi 3:20). The Church has confidence in this promise and so, in every age, she bears witness to the Lord Jesus’ caution that “it will not immediately be the end” when we see of the portents he list occur (Luke 21:9). “Keeping this admonition in mind, from the beginning the Church lives in prayerful waiting for her Lord…” with the certainty that not a hair on the head of her children will be destroyed.[3]
This certainty in the love of her Master and Teacher causes Mother Church to call her children to live in this same mindset of prayerful waiting (cf. John 13:13). Indeed, she summons us not to hasty action but to gentle patience as we await the end of the story of our history and the joyful coming of the Bridegroom. Indeed, she summons us to “stand erect and raise [our] heads because [our] redemption is at hand” (Luke 21:28).
This does not mean, of course, that the end of the world is, as it were, right around the corner. It may be, for all we know, “but of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Matthew 24:36). There is no point in us trying to guess the precise timing of the Lord’s return, of that day “when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble” (Malachi 3:19). Rather, instead of “not keeping busy by minding the business of others,” we should take comfort in the fact that the Lord loves even the hairs on our heads – even those that have fallen out – and do all that we can to live in a way worthy of his love.
If we are living in a way worthy of his love, there is no reason whatever to fear the day of the Lord’s coming. Rather, living in his love brings peace and contentment to our hearts and allows us to live in prayerful waiting, longing for the day when, “with trumpets and the sound of the horn,” we will “sing joyfully before the King, the Lord” (Psalm 98:6).
We know that we are living “in a very great story” because it is not only our story, but also the story of Jesus Christ (the word “Gospel,” after all, comes from an Anglo-Saxon word mean “God’s story”).[4] Indeed, the Church, our Mother, tells us this story year after year in her sacred liturgy. She never grows weary of repeating it, of telling God’s story, even if we grow weary of hearing it. Children, we know, seldom grow weary of hearing the same story over and over again. Perhaps that is why Jesus tells us we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven unless we become like little children (cf. Matthew 18:3).
And while we know the ending, it behooves us not to anticipate it by casting aside our patience too hastily. Likewise, it behooves us not to stay indefinitely at the beginning of its climax – at the Birth of Love-made-flesh - as so many are wont to do in these days. In fact, it does us good to instead stay at pace with Mother Church in her retelling of this very great story.
Next Sunday we will hear of the Sovereign Kingship of Christ and what it means for us. Then, the following Sunday, we will begin to hear how God prepared the world for his coming, first at the end of time and then, strange as it might seem, in that holy manger. Only after this will Mother Church tell us of the Birth of the Babe of Bethlehem; she waits to tell us of his Incarnation with baited breath because she wants us to be ready to hear it.
Let us not seek to celebrate too soon. Let us instead be content to ponder what it means that we are loved so thoroughly that not even a hair of our heads will be allowed to be eternally destroyed. Let us, then, not live “in a disorderly way” by rearranging parts of our story (II Thessalonians 3:7). Let us instead allow the mystery of his love for us to quietly resound and reverberate within our hearts, to grow slowly within us so our understanding and appreciation of his love will deepen and burst forth in a joyful harmony because by our perseverance we will have secured our lives (cf. Luke 21:19). Amen.
[1] Aidan Nichols, Year of the Lord’s Favour – A Homilary for the Roman Liturgy, Vol. 3: The Temporal Cycle: Sundays through the Year (Leominster, United Kingdom: Gracewing, 2012), 169.
[2] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 214.11-12.
[3] Joseph Ratzinger, The Joy of Knowing Christ: Meditations on the Gospels (Ijamsville, Maryland: The Word Among Us Press, 2009), 115.
[4] J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 66 to Christopher Tolkien, 6 May 1944. In Humphrey Carpenter, ed., T Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981), 78.
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