33rd Sunday - Fr. Leo
As we approach the end of the liturgical year, our scriptures speak of the end times and what will happen when the experience of this life is transformed into the next.
The book of Daniel says about the end times, “At that time (of distress) your people shall escape, everyone who is found written in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake: some shall live forever.”
What is amazing is that this expression of faith was made long before the birth of Jesus Christ. The continuity is the Spirit that speaks that same truth in different times and different ways.
The psalm echoes the same Spirit when it prays, “You will show me the path to life, fullness of joys in your presence, the delights at your right hand forever.” The psalm helps us celebrate the Lord as our inheritance. Such Joy!
Mark’s gospel proclaims the end with the second coming when the Son of Man will return and gather his elect from the four winds before this world passes away, but he says that we will not know the day, nor the hour.
This not knowing, is a call to live each moment with expectation of the Spirit’s breaking into our lives and drawing us to the Lord. Faith is living with a lively expectation of Grace in our lives. So it is good if we heed these scriptures and live as though our death and transformation was only a moment away.
If we had this kind of faith, every moment of our lives would be an immense blessing. So let us not wait till we know we are dying to appreciate the profoundness and blessing of every breath. Let us not depart from God, but seek in all things to know his presence and love. This is why there is that familiar latin phrase, tempis fugit momento mori, which means, time flies, remember death.