Homily for Thirty-third Sunday of Year C
One of my favourite stories, one which I tell often, is the story Cardinal Basil Hume wrote about what happens after death. I love this story because it is the Gospel in a nutshell.
A priest started his homily at a funeral saying, “I am going to speak about the judgement”. There was dismay in the congregation. People were visibly shocked at the insensitivity of the priest to mention judgement with the coffin there and the grieving family. But the priest went on to say, “Judgement is whispering into the ear of a merciful and compassionate God the story of my life, a story which I have never been able to tell”.
Cardinal Hume goes on to say that many of us have a story, or part of one at any rate, about which we have never been able to speak to anyone. Fear of being misunderstood, inability to understand ourselves, ignorance of the darker side of our hidden lives, or just shame, make it very difficult for many people. And so, our true story is not told, or only half of it is.
What a relief it will be to be able to whisper freely and fully into that merciful and compassionate ear. After all that is what God always wanted. He waits for us to come home to him. He receives us, his prodigal children, now contrite and humble, with an embrace. In that embrace we start to tell him our story, and he begins that process of healing and preparation needed for us to experience Heaven.
We are nearing the end of the liturgical year. In fact, next week is the last Sunday of the liturgical year when we celebrate the feast of Christ the King. And then we are into Advent again, preparing for the celebration of the coming of Christ at Christmas. Each liturgical year is a cycle when we celebrate the mysteries of the life of Christ, and the mysteries of our own Christian life and experience.
In these last few weeks of the liturgical year, we have reflected on those things that will happen at the end of our earthly lives as individuals and at the end of time for all humanity. Not so long ago we reflected on our heavenly destiny with all the Saints which we celebrated on All Saints Day. This was followed by a reflection on the healing and reconciling experience of Purgatory for our loved ones and ourselves, when we commemorated All Souls’ Day.
The readings for this Sunday all speak of the Second Coming of Jesus. This Second Coming of Jesus is associated with the Last Judgment and the Resurrection of the Body, which we profess our belief in every time we recite the Creed. Frequently this day in the Old Testament is referred to as the Day of the Lord.
This is the language that the prophet Malachi uses in our first reading today. He speaks of two categories of people and says how this Day of the Lord will affect each of them. Firstly, for the arrogant and evildoers this Day will be a disaster! Malachi says that they will be burnt up.
A few weeks ago, we reflected on the importance of humility. Humble people know their need for God, for his forgiveness and healing. They know the truth about themselves and faced with that reality, they turn to God for mercy and healing. Humility is the opposite of arrogance, and Malachi, speaking the word of God, associates arrogance with evil.
Those who are arrogant and proud refuse to humble themselves and admit the truth about themselves. They refuse God’s mercy and healing, and so, the Day of the Lord is disastrous for them. The humble are those whom Malachi describes as fearing God’s name. They are the ones who stand in awe of God and worship him. For them, Malachi uses beautiful imagery: On the Day of the Lord, the sun of righteousness will shine out with healing in its rays. They will be healed through the saving power of Jesus.
The second reading from the Second Letter of St Paul to the Thessalonians reflects on a crisis that the church in Thessalonica was experiencing in the early years of St Paul’s preaching. These early Christians were so convinced that the Second Coming of Jesus was about to happen that some of them gave up all the ordinary day to day activities that people engage in. They refused to do any work. From their point of view, it was pointless to start any project or get on with things because everything would be interrupted by the coming of Jesus at any moment. St Paul does not deny the closeness of the coming of Christ, but he gives them a sound rule: if anyone refuses to work, they are not to be given food. He wants these Christians to go on quietly working.
So, when will the Second Coming be? Well, God’s time is not our time! In the psalms we are told that for the God a thousand years are as a single day. We don’t know when the Lord is coming again. For many of us, and perhaps all of us, the Day of the Lord for us may be our personal bodily death. We need to go on living our Christians lives as serenely as possible waiting for that event. If we are prepared to meet the Lord in our bodily death, we need not live in fear of the Second Coming of Jesus. If we are prepared for death, we will be prepared for the coming of Jesus again in Judgment.
In the Gospel Jesus also speaks about the end times and his Second Coming. He starts off prophesying about the destruction of the Temple, which did in fact come about in 70AD about 36 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection; and Jesus goes on to speak about the persecution of Christians, which we know took place in those early centuries of Christianity and which has continued in some places up to our present day. In fact, there were more Christian martyrs in the twentieth century than in all previous centuries combined.
How right Jesus was when he prophesied that there would be those who would say “The end is nigh”. Self-styled prophets have been saying this for centuries. Jesus words: “Take care not to be deceived” and “Refuse to join them” are so appropriate here. The message of today’s liturgy is: Don’t be afraid. Keep trusting in God, be a steadfast Christian and bear witness to God’s love. You are in his hands, and Christ is here among us.
Jesus also says, “Do not be frightened”. He encourages us to persist in the faith. Our endurance will win us our lives. The Second Coming of Jesus will happen in God’s own time. We need not be frightened. We need to be prepared for it and go on quietly living our Christian lives. Our being prepared for it will mean that it will be an event when the sun of righteousness will shine out on us with healing in its rays.
The judgement which we must all inevitably face, prompts us to think about our ultimate meaning and purpose, our destiny. It puts this life and all that keeps us busy, into perspective. We need to know the truth about ourselves and face ourselves in all humility, so that this Day of the Lord, whether it is our personal bodily death, or the Second Coming of Jesus, will be an experience of knowing our need for God’s mercy and healing, and taking the final step into his embrace.
