It's the End of the World (as we know it)

It's the End of the World (as we know it)
Nov. 17, 2019     33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - C
by Dcn. Bob Bonomi

Once again, as we approach the end of our liturgical calendar, our readings reflect the eschatological theme of the end times.  I hate the word, since I normally mispronounce it, but the definition for it is clear: it’s the study of 'end things', whether the end of an individual life, the end of the age, the end of the world or the nature of the Kingdom of God.  Or, to quote the R.E.M. song used in the movie, “Chicken Little”, “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”

And there seems to be five main scenarios predicting the near end of the world in our movies today (in no particular order): 

1.    An Alien Invasion
2.    Hit by an Asteroid
3.    A Catastrophic Geological Phenomena (earthquakes, etc.)
4.    Our own Self-Inflicted Armageddon (whether that be from nuclear war, biological war or the ever present man-made Global Warming – excuse me, Climate Change), or
5.    (My favorite):  the Zombie Apocalypse. 

And despite all of the death and destruction portrayed, at least in the movies we usually seem to avert annihilation.

It also seems that, while any of the above scenarios might possibly happen (with the remote exception of the Zombie Apocalypse), we’ve heard them so often that I sometimes think that we’re becoming like the villagers in the Aesop’s Fables story about the little shepherd boy who cried “wolf” – the Big One could happen, but not in my lifetime.

We’ve become complacent about our own, personal, impending end-of-the-world.

Oh, sure, there are those doomsayers that predict the world is coming to an end.  Just like in Jesus’ time, there are those who claim that the world as we know it is over, and they can even tell you the date it will happen.  I’m amazed that in just the last twenty years alone, there’s been at least one prediction of a world-ending catastrophic event each year. (Except for 2004 and 2005 – I wonder where the doomsayers were those two years?)

It makes me wonder: were the people in Jesus’ time also fixated on spectacular events signaling the end of the world?  Did they have a morbid curiosity about it, like many today?  It kind of sounds like it, doesn’t it?  It almost sounds like Jesus could be talking to us today.  And, in fact, he is.  His examples from today’s Gospel can be seen in our own history.

Take, for example, the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.  While most Catholic scholars believe that Luke’s Gospel was written after the destruction of the Temple, the mere destruction of a place of worship does not mean that the second coming is near, as we can see with the fact that the Temple had been “destroyed” before – the Babylonians razed it in the 500s BC, and it had been desecrated many times after it had been rebuilt before its final destruction by the Rome in 70AD. 

We too have seen beautiful sanctuaries of worship damaged or destroyed, such as the St John Lateran Archbasilica, whose feast we celebrated last weekend.  It is considered the mother church of the Roman Catholic faithful, given to the Church in the 4th century. it was almost completely destroyed by an earthquake in 897, rebuilt and rededicated twice during the next two centuries; ravaged by fire around 1308 and again in 1361; and its current appearance was completed in 1735.

Or, how about the Cathedral of Notre Dame?  Originally constructed around the sixth century, it was destroyed by the Normans in the mid-9th century and then rebuilt.  Its current structure started around the 12th century and sustained massive damage last spring from fire. Its reconstruction began in September.

Let us look at Jesus’ other warnings.

 “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.”  It seems that we have always been at war.  We’ve faced:

•    Intra-national or wars within a country like our own civil war
•    Inter-national wars or wars between two nations like our battle for independence with England
•    Global conflicts like World War I and World War II.

“There will be powerful earthquakes…”  Our catastrophic geological disasters have included:

•    The 1556 earthquake in Shensi, China, with about 830,000 deaths,
•    The Christmas earthquake and tsunami in the Indian ocean in 2004 that killed ¼ million;
•    Or the Haitian earthquake in 2010 that killed over 200,000 people.

“Famines…”  Examples of famines which have rocked the world:

•    The Russian famine of 1601-1603 left an estimated two million dead;
•    The Great Bengal famine of 1770 which claimed an estimated 10 million in Bengal, India
•    Persian famine of 1917-1918 - the deaths of up to one-quarter of the total population of Iran.

“Plagues…”  Plagues have been particularly devastating in history:

•    The Plague of Justinian (mid-6th century.) Death Toll: 25 million
•    The Black Death (mid-1th century.) Death Toll: 75 – 200 million;
•    Flu Pandemic of 1968.  Death Toll: over 1 million
•    HIV/AIDS Pandemic (at its peak, between 2005-2012)  Death Toll: 36 million

So what is Jesus telling us here?  Since these things have been happening now for over 2,000 years, does that mean that we are not living in the “end times” that Jesus warned us of? 

NO.  He points out that while there will be many tragic events that may occur in our lives before the second coming, he admonishes us that they, in and of themselves, do not mean that the end of the world is here.  We each have a mission to fulfill, despite the scary-ness of the times in which we live.

And we will each most likely face our own end times before the end.

But each of today’s readings is a warning to us against becoming too complacent in our own lives, and they give us hope as they point out to whom we should be looking to in order to face any of our challenges.  God.  Jesus. The Holy Spirit.

In the movie, “Rim of the World”, four misfit pre-teens are caught up in a doomsday scenario – the end of the world by alien invasion (option 1).  Although these kids have to fight aliens and even their own people in order to save the world, their biggest challenges are in overcoming their own personal battles – the boy who is afraid of everything; the kid who has been labeled a criminal; the girl who is an orphan because her parents didn’t “want” her; the kid who has lost everything because his dad was sent to jail.  It wasn’t the alien who threatened them the most; it was their own fears.

That’s US.  And how we face our individual fears, those challenges, those OPPORTUNITIES to witness to others the love and mercy of God with the light of Christ, which will define how we will meet our own “end times.”  And not everyone will agree or accept our testimony.  We may face persecution; we may lose everything we have including our lives, or at least our livelihoods.  But if we persevere; if we do not become complacent; God will save us.  We will not fear the end of the world as we know it.  We will experience the best of all possible end times:

An eternity with God.