33rd Sunday: The End is near?

 
“He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” The Nicene Creed
 
It is a common experience in everybody’s spiritual life to feel a loss of the sense of God. Sometime, we confuse the images of God we conjure up in our minds with the reality of God. The loss of the sense of God can be experienced as fear, anxiety, confusion or the perception that the world does not make any sense. In my experience, people will have a wonderful, warm sense of God’s presence when they are younger, but that feeling is lost at some point. What went wrong?
The Old Testament prophets like Malachi talked about the day of the Lord. That day was a day of dread, confusion and fear. The experience of suffering was necessary, a kind of purgatory, before the Lord would come to save his people. “But for you who fear my name, there will arise
the sun of justice with its healing rays.” Mal. 3 The prophets always promise that God is there for his people. Count on it!
Sometimes, the loss of the sense of God’s presence results when religion and the external touchstones of religion are lost. Many Catholics suffered that during the priest pedophile crisis some years ago. Jesus refers to this kind of crisis when he talks about the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. The Temple was a massive structure that stood above where the Wailing Wall is in Modern Jerusalem. It seemed like the solid presence and protection of God in the midst of his people. That Temple and its predecessor had been there for the better part of 1,000 years. Jesus said that this Temple would be torn down and not ‘a stone would be left on a stone.’ What would follow would be wars, insurrections, plagues and turmoil. Jesus concludes, “By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”
You are probably aware that we had a presidential election this past week and many were thrilled and others appalled by the result. In the days following, various writers analyzed the results. President Obama and President-elect Trump have called for national unity because our country is so angrily divided. One thing that runs through the Catholic press is how disappointed Catholics are with each other.
We tend to confuse faith with our capacity to conjure up a sense of God’s divine purpose that corresponds with our own sense of purpose. When we are alarmed by events in the world, the destruction of the temple, wars and insurrections, it can create dread and anxiety. This can be a maturing experience because it calls us to trust in God even after our sense of comfort is gone. Why would we need trust if everything was going our way? Jesus counsels us to persevere in the life of faith.