The Harvest of the Earth

Many of the readings for the recent liturgies speak of end times.  Today's first reading, Revelation 14: 14-19, speaks about the "earth's harvest [being] fully ripe. So the one who was sitting on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth and the earth was harvested....[A]nother angel came out of the temple in heaven who also had a sharp sickle...'Use your sharp sickle and cut the clusters from the earth's vines, for its grapes are ripe.' So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and cut the earth's vintage. He threw it into the great wine press of God's fury."

This passage is full of symbolism!  The "grapes" of the earth are obviously evil deeds that will meet "God's fury".  There is a harvest of good  deeds, however, that is "fully ripe."   May you and I be part of "the fully ripe" harvest,  the harvest of those whose lives are being transformed every day by our relationship with Christ and one another. May we be among those whose being, washed in the blood of Christ, is being poured out every day by our self-sacrificing love for the sake of others. May you and I be men and women who follow the Lamb in seeking those who are lost, who shield those under our care from Satan's snares, who teach others the way to being Eucharistic people broken and poured out for the sake of others' well-being.  If we seek to live this way and keep our focus on Jesus we will not be afraid when the "fully ripe" earth is, in fact, harvested and its "grapes" thrown "into the great wine press of God's fury."