Beginnings and Endings

Today’s readings, Revelation 14: 14-19 and Luke 21: 5-11, speak of the end time and what will precede that time. We are warned not to be deceived into thinking that the end time is now. Rather, believe that, yes, the end times will come but preceding such a time, there will be wars and threats of war. There will be natural as well as man-made disasters,  chaos and disorders of every kind.  We have a choice of focusing either on the darkness or the Light, on the disasters or ways to help those who are victims of a disaster. We can choose to be people of the Light or of the darkness, people of hopefulness or hopelessness, people filled with love or hatred of any of its forms . 

As we approach the end of the Church year and begin Advent this coming Sunday, we are challenged to take stock of our lives.  Are we personally ready to begin anew? All of life, as we know it,  is about endings and beginnings. Every morning the Lord gives us another day to begin anew in making the world a better place, in bringing light into darkness, hope into despair, love into hate-filled situations.  Each day we have new opportunities to right wrongs we may have done or to forgive wrongs others may have done against us. Each day  we are given opportunities to have our eyes and ears and hearts and minds and wills open to the Lord at work in the midst of our lives and the lives of others and to use us as His instrument of doing good in our world.

What choices will you and I make today?  What will be our focus? In what ways are we being challenged to begin anew?

Jesus: God with Us

In the first reading of today’s liturgy, Jeremiah 23: 5-8, the prophet proclaims the coming of Jesus, the Messiah raised up from the root of Jesse.  Jesus is a King of justice, of righteousness and of truth. No deceit is found in Him. Jesus is the Son of God made one with us in the Incarnation. He is the one who frees all of us in exile—those exiled from their earthly homes and all of us exiled from our heavenly homes by sin and selfishness, greed and avarice, deceit and rebelliousness, corruption and ignorance, hopelessness and faithlessness.  Jesus brings all of us home who are exiled from our true selves, from our personal integrity, from our authentic freedom.  

Jesus says to us: I will bring you back to Me.  I will restore you to truth and justice, to ways that preserve your integrity, that restore your right as women, as precious little girls and boys with the right to be treated with respect, to be taught rightly. I will free each of My sons and daughters from being the   property which others abuse, mutilate or exploit for personal pleasure and for the accumulation of this world’s wealth.  I am a Just Judge. Those who abuse, mutilate and exploit my children, young or old, female or male, who destroy anyone’s right to be true to themselves, to grow up to their fullest human potential, including those who kill a child in its mother’s womb,  I will bring to justice. I have come to free anyone put into slavery by anyone or by any means.

I am God; there is no other (Is 45:5).

Keeping Hope Alive

In today’s first reading, Elijah is certain that God will break the long famine that has descended upon the land.  Like us when our earth is scorched  weeks on end with no rain in sight, Elijah keeps hoping.   Seven times the Lord directs Elijah to climb to the top of Carmel and look out to the sea. Every time, except the seventh, he reports nothing.  How often does it not seem as though “the parched deserts” our lives  are not going to receive the needed “rain,” yet we keep looking, hoping, believing that  the desired change will come, that things will get better, that God will not let us down. And we know that, even in the midst of the worst of droughts. Maybe a child is into drugs or is abusing alcohol, bad choices are being made again and again and again. And the Lord keeps  nudging us, as He did Elijah: “Look again.”  “Don’t give up hope.”  

The seventh time, Elijah reported, “There is a cloud as small as a man’s hand rising from the sea.”  The rains did come--in torrents. Something as small as that cloud rises on the horizon of our lives. Our hope is sparked and we say to our  family members, our friends, the members of our religious communities: Don’t give up! Things are going to change. I can see it. I feel it.  I know it even though I  cannot explain it. I just know that God is at work in that situation, as bleak as it might look right now!”  Beyond a doubt, that “sealed stone”  will be removed and the “dead” will be raised. Beyond a doubt, the “chains” that bind that person will be broken, the deaf ears will be restored to hearing, the blindness to sight, the hardness to softness. We just know it because that is the way our God works.

Lord, never let me lose hope no matter how bleak a situation may appear within or outside of myself. You are always at work beneath the surface, in the core of my being and in the depths of any situation. Help me always believe in your power to right wrongs, to transform parched deserts, to make parched hearts fertile, and to bring me or anyone else back from wayward directions one might be choosing.  I ask this in Jesus’ name.