Luke 21:5-19
The horrors depicted in the readings from Malachi and Luke today are real to us. They are not far fetched. All one needs to do is to turn on the 24 hour news. We see wars and natural disasters and civil unrest. Calamities shake us.
With these readings the Church focuses our attention on the last things, the last end, the end times, our own end and the world’s. In the world of nature, we see that everything is dying. Yet we also know regeneration, new life, awaits us in the spring.
The challenge to us as we approach the end times of the liturgical year is to remember, remember, and remember where we are secure. Businesses fail. Jobs are lost through restructuring. People lose their homes. These events remind us that we are fragile, that our lives are transitory.
Saint Thomas More tells King Henry the VIII’s men: “Death comes for us all. Even for Kings he comes.” Pope Saint John XXII, after he learned that he had terminal stomach cancer, went down to the crypt beneath St. Peter’s Basilica where the popes lie buried, to tell his predecessors that he would be joining them soon. My grandmother told my dad, shortly before her death: “Your life is like passing by that window.”
Where is our security? It’s in the Risen Christ! The Resurrection – as Dcn. Brian reminded us last week in his homily. Our beginning and our last end is in God, in Christ. Yes, we are vulnerable, yet our security is in Christ Jesus who is King of our lives. We celebrate that next weekend in the Solemnity of Christ the King, the last Sunday of the Church year. Christ became vulnerable, so we could have this security in his risen life. The Risen Christ, King of the universe, heals our spirit, strengthens our hope. He is “the sun of justice with its healing rays” as we hear today in the reading from Malachi.
God will be with us today. Today. Salvation breaks in today. As I said two weeks ago, St. Luke stresses that salvation – Christ Himself – breaks in upon us daily. He is the “tender compassion of our God.” We live in hope and we keep on doing acts of kindness, love and compassion that bring Christ’s love into the cosmos where we are situated. Yes, here in Harrodsburg. The “tender compassion of our God” is transforming us and our universe. We keep vigil daily until the end times arrive for us.
We take the Eucharist to strengthen us in hope, in faith and in the love we share. “With perseverance [we] will secure our lives.” Christ’s love for the world will give way to the eternal kingdom of Christ the King of the Universe. We keep vigil until the end.