33rd Sunday: The time for the harvest is drawing near

Readings for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Fall, the time of the harvest, is drawing to a close. The liturgical year, the way we pray our way through time, sanctifying both time and space, is reminding us of our approaching end. For the unbeliever, that might seem morbid, but for the Christian, it is a hopeful and wholesome reminder of the meaning of our lives. Next Sunday, the Solemn Feast of Christ the King, reminds us that there is both a divine order and justice to our lives, though we may only dimly experience it in our own life. "In those days after that tribulation the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light and the stars will be falling from the sky and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.” Mk. 13. All of creation, the divine order, will be shaken to its core and reconfigured.
 
If we take what Jesus said as a timetable, “I assure you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” we miss the point. How many generations have now passed since the Lord spoke these words?  Don’t reduce these words to the Lord’s historical period, but let these words speak to every generation, especially our own. All of us are passing into the mist of disappearing ages. Jesus’ words are a commentary on living in this day, this moment, this life. Now is the time to bear fruit. Carpe diem, seize the day. The time is now to participate in this new divine order of grace.
 
The Book of Daniel
Daniel is one of the Old Testament’s stories about the sanctity of time. In Daniel, God works to save his people, not from a flood or the Egyptians, but for God’s kingdom. God sends Michael, the archangel, the general of God’s armies, to face the Persians. Daniel wrote, “it shall be a time unsurpassed in distress since nations began until that time.” Dan. 12
Daniel then prophesied, that in the wake of this battle, the dead would be ‘resurrected.” Christians seized on this text as a prophecy of Christ.
 
Daniel was written during the second century before Christ, a time when Israel was mired in a great civil war. That war was between Jews who sided with the Greeks, the heirs of Alexander the Great, and the Maccabees, the leaders of those Orthodox Jews who defended the Temple and the Torah, Israel’s sacred way of life. It was a clash between Greek philosophy and gods, on one side, and the Maccabees, with the God of Israel and his priestly people, on the other. Daniel believed that the God of Israel had saved his people from the Persians and he would save them from the Greeks.
 
Judaism, as Jesus knew it, survived because of the bravery and devotion of the Maccabees to God’s sacred law. After the Maccabean victory, a Jewish kingdom was established, once again, two hundred years before Christ. The Hasmonean kingship survived until Herod the Great allied himself with Rome and seized control of Israel. Jesus was born into this Roman dominated imitation of the Kingdom of Israel with its corrupt king. It survived the few decades during which Jesus lived. The ‘tribulation’ referred to by Jesus was the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans in 70 A.D.
 
Jesus and the End of Time
Early Christians expected that Jesus would return soon after the Resurrection to establish the Kingdom of God.  As the Romans dismantled the Jewish kingdoms, killed and enslaved the population of Israel and proclaimed the leadership of the current emperor as the reigning divinity, the Christians slowly continued the work of spreading the Good News. Not ‘Caesar kyrios’ but ‘Jesus Christos’, Jesus the Lord. Jesus words about the end were enshrined in the Gospel of Mark.
 
"In those days after that tribulation
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from the sky,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. "And then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in the clouds' with great power and glory,
and then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky. Mk. 13
 
Daniel prophesied the generalship of Michael in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Jesus as Lord would lead God’s angel armies. In a month we will proclaim, once again the birth of Christ, where angel armies surrounding the birthplace of the Christ proclaimed, “Glory to God in the highest and peace to people of good will.” Luke 2:14
 
The Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell
Earthly kingdoms don’t last. The four last things, death, judgment, heaven and hell, are healthy realities to meditate on as we approach the end of the liturgical year. Death is the moment when our life is fulfilled and we are ready to be gathered to God by our Lord. Judgment, we hope, is to hear the words of our Savior, “well done good and faithful servant.” Mt. 25:23. Heaven is our resurrection into God’s new creation. Hell, is the failure of the human soul to respond to God’s love or the needs of our neighbor; a self-imposed exile from the life of grace.
 
To those who would calculate the day and know their own end Jesus says, “But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Mk 13. The Christian theology of hope looks confidently to the future because of what has already occurred in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
 
Daniel and the Letter to the Hebrews remind us that our expectations about the future are rooted the victory of Jesus’ once­for­all sacrifice. The Liturgical Year guides us step by step, reminding us of the big picture. The current state of our contemporary science reads the data and teaches us that our minuscule human history is framed by the Big Bang at the beginning and the Big Crunch at the end. The Liturgical Year teaches that this picture is incomplete unless we recognize that the Creator of all is manifest in Jesus of Nazareth, especially in his death and resurrection.