Homily for the Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

As I mentioned last week, the end of the liturgical year brings about a focus in the readings on the return of Our Lord at the end of the world. It’s good to be reminded that Our Lord has promised to return one day, and that we need to be always prepared to receive Him. We do not know when that day will arrive, but we need to be always looking forward with joy to His return.

While Jesus did not specify when He would return, there are many groups throughout history that have tried to predict when His second coming would occur. Some have looked at significant events, such as wars or natural disasters, and used them to calculate a year or even a specific date for His coming. Other groups have chosen important milestones in the calendar, such as the year 1000 or the 2012 end of the Mayan calendar, as obvious times for the return of the Lord to occur.

Obviously, these groups have been wrong so far, and I’m confident that we will wake up on January 1, 2013 and realize that 2012 was also wrong. As Jesus put it in the Gospel today, “See that you not be deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and ‘The time has come.’ Do not follow them!” (Lk 21:8) The fact is that Our Lord has not revealed to us a specific date for His triumphant return. He will return at a time when He has preordained, whether tomorrow or a thousand years from now.

However, this does not mean that we can be lax in our preparations for His return. We need to realize that we have been in the End Times from the moment Our Lord ascended into Heaven. Our Lord truly could come at any moment, and woe to those who are unprepared! As the Prophet Malachi says, “the day is coming, blazing like an oven, when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire, leaving them neither root nor branch”. (Mal 3:19) We all know how quickly and thoroughly hay will burn, so we don’t want to let our pride cause us to be unprepared.

Some of the groups I’ve mentioned before have used the signs that Jesus mentions in the Gospel to make their false predictions. These signs – wars, famines, plagues, earthquakes, and so on – are not meant to be a checklist of things to watch for before He returns, but rather an exhortation not to become discouraged when we see these events in the world around us. Despite all these terrible events, we have hope in the return of Our Lord that we will one day no longer face death as part of our lives. Even if we are persecuted for Jesus’ name, arrested and punished for following Him, we need not fear the loss of this life as we will have a greater life after His return. This truly is our hope, and is what it means to be a Christian.

As we go through these End Times, just as Christians have for nearly 2000 years, may we seek to follow Our Lord with our whole lives, preparing for His return at the end of time. As Jesus tells us, “By your perseverance you will secure your lives.” (Lk 21:19)