St. Joseph Church (Cottleville)
33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A
November 15-16, 2008 - 5:00 p.m. & 7:00 a.m.
Prv 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31
Ps 128
1 Thes 5:1-6
Mt 25:14-30
In a few moments, we will profess the Creed together, as we do each Sunday. In professing our faith about Jesus Christ, we will say these words: “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” Because we are in the final weeks of this liturgical year (Advent begins two weeks from today.), the Church is calling us to focus our attention on the last things, the end times. Our Lord came among us the first time in the Incarnation in a hidden way. Who would have known on that first Christmas night, except perhaps for His Mother, that Jesus was not merely human but also fully divine? How many could have watched Him die, rejected on the cross, and imagine that God Himself had been put on trial? But when Christ comes again, His return will not be in a hidden way. For 2000 years Christians have professed the belief that He will be recognized for who He really is – the Lord of all times and of all peoples. As the Creed says, “He will come again in glory.”
At His second coming, our Lord will establish His kingdom definitively, His kingdom for which each of us, if we are honest with ourselves, desperately longs. What will this kingdom look like? The book of Revelation presents a beautiful picture of it: “God’s dwelling [will be] with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them [as their God]. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, [for] the old order has passed away” (Rev 21:3-4). All suffering, all sorrow, even death itself will be obliterated. In place of these, we will know perfect peace, enduring joy, the fulfillment of every desire.
How wonderful this is! But we cannot forget the next part of the Creed. “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” We don’t like to think about this part of our faith. It makes us uncomfortable. We prefer to think of our God as loving and merciful, not as a judge. The fact of the matter remains, however, that the judgment of Christ is actually one more manifestation of His love and mercy. How can this be? When God created each one of us, He gave us a wondrous gift. He gave us the gift of freedom, the ability to choose for ourselves whether we would love Him back. In other words, He left the choice up to us – whether we would look to Him for happiness, or whether we’d turn our gaze in another direction, to some created thing that we hope can make us happy. It’s up to you and it’s up to me to choose for ourselves. Christ’s coming as judge, then, isn’t a vengeful God coming to inflict punishment on His people who have sinned. God is not out to get us. He’s not some sort of divine accountant watching closely to add every little sin to His list. But He does respect our free choices. When He comes as judge, He will take those with Him who have chosen to love Him, to make every decision in their lives based on Him. And He will allow those who have chosen to look elsewhere for happiness to continue to be separated from Him for all eternity. God longs for us to be in communion with Him for all eternity. He wants only our salvation. It saddens Him to see us turn away from Him, because He knows that only He can fulfill our deepest desires. But more than this, so much does He love us, that He respects our decision to seek our own good, to try to make ourselves happy, without any aid from Him.
The Church turns our attention to these last things at this time of the year because we need to be reminded to ask ourselves a very basic question: How am I living my life? Does my life accord with what I profess each week here at Mass? Am I truly living with Jesus Christ at the center of my life, or have I placed something or someone else above Him on my list of priorities? The prospect of judgment should not be a cause of terror and fear in our lives, because we know the truth, what is expected of us. We have received the truth from Christ, and it has been passed down faithfully from generation to generation in the teaching of the Church. As St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: “You are not in darkness. . . . For all of you are children of light and children of the day.” So we are faced again with the question: How am I living my life? Does my life look like the Catholic Church says it should look? Have I opened myself to the light of the Lord’s teaching?
The Gospel today spoke of the talents God has given us. There are some talents that every one of us have received. One of these is the gift of our intellect, the ability to come to know the truth. As Catholics, we believe that the Church is something more than a man-made institution. We believe that it is a gift from Christ Himself, the instrument through which He continues to live among us. We call the Church the Bride of Christ. If He loves her so much as to take her as His spouse, then surely He wants us also to love her. So, if there are areas of darkness in our understanding of the truth, if there are things the Church proclaims to be good news but that seem only to be great burdens to us, we must use that talent, the gift of our intellect, to seek to understand more deeply what the Church is saying to us. We must ask the Lord Jesus to come into the darkness of our ignorance with the light of His truth. Maybe I don’t understand why the Church teaches what she does about contraception. Maybe it makes no sense to me that the Church will not ordain women or that she insists that I confess my sins to a priest. Whatever it is, we must ask the Christ Himself to help us: “Come, Lord Jesus, into my confusion!” Whatever it is that stands in the way of my being in full communion with Christ, with His Church, I must beg the Lord to remove that roadblock, to help me to turn every bit of my life over to Him. At the end of time, I don’t think the Lord will outright condemn those who don’t understand the Church’s teaching, but I do think He will ask us if we opened our hearts to the Church, if we made an effort, strove to understand her, were willing to change our lives to conform them to the standard held up by His Church.
At His second coming, our Lord will establish His kingdom definitively, His kingdom for which each of us, if we are honest with ourselves, desperately longs. What will this kingdom look like? The book of Revelation presents a beautiful picture of it: “God’s dwelling [will be] with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them [as their God]. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, [for] the old order has passed away” (Rev 21:3-4). All suffering, all sorrow, even death itself will be obliterated. In place of these, we will know perfect peace, enduring joy, the fulfillment of every desire.
How wonderful this is! But we cannot forget the next part of the Creed. “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” We don’t like to think about this part of our faith. It makes us uncomfortable. We prefer to think of our God as loving and merciful, not as a judge. The fact of the matter remains, however, that the judgment of Christ is actually one more manifestation of His love and mercy. How can this be? When God created each one of us, He gave us a wondrous gift. He gave us the gift of freedom, the ability to choose for ourselves whether we would love Him back. In other words, He left the choice up to us – whether we would look to Him for happiness, or whether we’d turn our gaze in another direction, to some created thing that we hope can make us happy. It’s up to you and it’s up to me to choose for ourselves. Christ’s coming as judge, then, isn’t a vengeful God coming to inflict punishment on His people who have sinned. God is not out to get us. He’s not some sort of divine accountant watching closely to add every little sin to His list. But He does respect our free choices. When He comes as judge, He will take those with Him who have chosen to love Him, to make every decision in their lives based on Him. And He will allow those who have chosen to look elsewhere for happiness to continue to be separated from Him for all eternity. God longs for us to be in communion with Him for all eternity. He wants only our salvation. It saddens Him to see us turn away from Him, because He knows that only He can fulfill our deepest desires. But more than this, so much does He love us, that He respects our decision to seek our own good, to try to make ourselves happy, without any aid from Him.
The Church turns our attention to these last things at this time of the year because we need to be reminded to ask ourselves a very basic question: How am I living my life? Does my life accord with what I profess each week here at Mass? Am I truly living with Jesus Christ at the center of my life, or have I placed something or someone else above Him on my list of priorities? The prospect of judgment should not be a cause of terror and fear in our lives, because we know the truth, what is expected of us. We have received the truth from Christ, and it has been passed down faithfully from generation to generation in the teaching of the Church. As St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: “You are not in darkness. . . . For all of you are children of light and children of the day.” So we are faced again with the question: How am I living my life? Does my life look like the Catholic Church says it should look? Have I opened myself to the light of the Lord’s teaching?
The Gospel today spoke of the talents God has given us. There are some talents that every one of us have received. One of these is the gift of our intellect, the ability to come to know the truth. As Catholics, we believe that the Church is something more than a man-made institution. We believe that it is a gift from Christ Himself, the instrument through which He continues to live among us. We call the Church the Bride of Christ. If He loves her so much as to take her as His spouse, then surely He wants us also to love her. So, if there are areas of darkness in our understanding of the truth, if there are things the Church proclaims to be good news but that seem only to be great burdens to us, we must use that talent, the gift of our intellect, to seek to understand more deeply what the Church is saying to us. We must ask the Lord Jesus to come into the darkness of our ignorance with the light of His truth. Maybe I don’t understand why the Church teaches what she does about contraception. Maybe it makes no sense to me that the Church will not ordain women or that she insists that I confess my sins to a priest. Whatever it is, we must ask the Christ Himself to help us: “Come, Lord Jesus, into my confusion!” Whatever it is that stands in the way of my being in full communion with Christ, with His Church, I must beg the Lord to remove that roadblock, to help me to turn every bit of my life over to Him. At the end of time, I don’t think the Lord will outright condemn those who don’t understand the Church’s teaching, but I do think He will ask us if we opened our hearts to the Church, if we made an effort, strove to understand her, were willing to change our lives to conform them to the standard held up by His Church.
The truth of Jesus Christ is infinite. Even the most faithful of Catholics, even the most brilliant theologians, are called deeper into the mystery of God’s love. The fact that God is a mystery means not that He is incomprehensible but that there are always greater depths into which we can plunge. None of us knows how many days we will have on earth. None of us knows when we will meet our merciful Judge. This should motivate us to strive every day to deepen our knowledge of Him, while we have the time. As our knowledge grows, so too will our love. Let us today, at this Mass beg Him for this grace. Let us ask Him to pour His light into our darkened minds, so that we will come to know Him and love Him more perfectly. Then, when the day comes for us to meet Him in glory, when He turns His face towards us in all of its radiant splendor, nothing will stop us from running courageously towards Him, into His waiting arms, to hear Him say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant,” and to spend eternity with Him in the Kingdom of Heaven.
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