This week end there are many things and people to pray for and we think about and pray for all those who are affected by the wildfires that are ongoing at the moment in California. We pray for the families of all those who perished as well as those who are missing.
In November as a Church we pray for the dead as we come to the end of the Liturgical Year we listen to Jesus’s words concerning the end times. The vision of the future in the Gospel Reading for this Sunday doesn’t look very appealing. The bad news is delivered first of all. Jesus imagines a time of terror and trouble and persecution. People will be betrayed and handed over to the authorities. There will be wars and earthquakes and famines. Jesus says, “These things must happen.” Then there will be cosmic upheavals: “the sun will be darkened, the moon will lose its brightness, the stars will come falling from heaven”. After this catalogue of disaster there is the good news. Jesus looks beyond the time of distress to the final time, when the Son of Man will gather the scattered people of God to himself. Jesus sees beyond suffering and persecution to a future of peace with God.
God does not call us to be anxious, but he calls us to confidence in the message we hear in the gospel and proclaim in our lives and he calls us to be vigilant that we remain in his light. Christ remains our high priest who has offered himself for the forgiveness of our sins. God knows what it is to be human. The Lord calls us to stayawake amidst the distractions of life, so that we will recognize him when he comes again. St. John of the Cross wrote, “When evening comes, you will be examined in love” (Sayings, 60). We prepare for the day of Christ’s coming by first recognizing him in our brothers and sisters and by knowing him in his word and his sacraments. False securities and shallow guarantees will not sustain us in times of strife and testing. God alone must be our hope. God’s ways must be our ways, so that when our securities and misplaced confidences fail us we can turn our eyes to God’s saving light. Let us keep vigilant — and not be anxious — for that day when God who is love calls us and looks at us with love.
Fullerton T 