“The day will come.”

Devastation. Ruin. Emptiness. Is this the fate of the earth? Jesus Himself, in today’s Gospel, saw terrible times ahead, a day coming when not one stone of our human temple will rest on another. He warned of the signs. There will be wars and insurrections. Nations will fight to the death against nations. These things are bound to happen. Life is bound to be this way. He is not speaking about the end of all times, but the condition of every time.

Each day is the last. Each time is the end time. Each human being faces the end of the world in the span of a life, whether he reach eight minutes or eighty years. The world, its opportunities and losses, passes away for us each night. Every sunset announces a closing of a day that will never come again. Each human death, as Bertrand Russell pondered, is the curtain on an unrepeatable drama which, without God, amounts to a tragedy. Every generation in some way is the last, the termination. And each generation, like each death and every day, witnesses the signs of the end times.

Everything that Christ predicted has taken place and is taking place and will continue to take place. We need not wait until the Millennium to unlock the mystery. Life itself is the mystery, this great groaning of creation that finds its meaning in hope alone. And so Christ counsels us not to be alarmed at our condition. Do not follow the false messiahs and easy predictors. In patient endurance, life will be saved. We await, then the arrival. “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”, will be our prayer.