The clock in my office won’t work, even after replacing the batteries, so I went to buy a new clock. Getting back to the car, I saw a ticket tucked to the windshield, which got me really upset! I exited the vehicle to check whether I had parked wrongly or at a reserved parking spot. Everything appeared fine. I pulled out the ticket and unfolding it, I saw written in bold prints: “Where will you spend eternity?” A few other sentences with misspellings warned about the imminent arrival of Jesus and why I should seek my salvation from a Baptist Church listed in the address.
So, it wasn’t after-all a ticket. I relaxed my already upset nerves and looking around I could see that all the cars in the lot had the “ticket.” I pulled out of the lot; but seriously, those words, “Where will you spend eternity” stuck to mind. The experience reminded me about the words of the scripture scholar, Raymond Brown, that “End-of-the-World” preachers provide us a valuable lesson: keeping the Second Coming at our attention and reminding us of the words we say or sing, often without attention, at Mass. For example: at the Creed we say: “He will come again in glory to JUDGE the living and the dead;” or at the Memorial acclamation: “When we eat this Bread and drink this Cup, we proclaim your Death, O Lord, until you come again.” As it did for me, may that “ticket” I got renew in everyone’s heart the desire for the great coming of the Lord!
You’d have noticed from today’s readings references to the end and the Second Coming. Those who know that the liturgical year has 34 Sundays and that today is the 33rd Sunday won’t be surprised that the Church is presenting to us this theme of the Second coming. We’re not to idle our time away like the Thessalonians whom Paul sternly admonishes in the second reading. We cannot keep minding everybody’s business but our own. We have no other option, after witnessing the various recorded attempts on Christians, than to gird our loins for what faces us. I will no longer need to preach about being intentional about our faith; the circumstances to which we are confronted leave no other choice for you. You have to decide to be intentional Catholics or “nones,” children of the kingdom or of the blindly innocuous world, a counter-cultural people or people who have no morals, and most importantly, a force for good in our society.
In the Gospel, Jesus asks us not to get flustered, distraught or full of anxiety, like those who mindlessly refuse to commit their lives to the kingdom. As persecution from the world is ominous, we have rich opportunities to become witnesses. It’s no longer just the early Christians to whom today’s message is addressed; they’ve had their share of persecution. The words: “You’ll be delivered up to those who will kill you for being faithful” was heard by all the early Church martyrs, but also by Oscar Romero, by Maximilian Kolbe, by the Coptic martyrs of Egypt, by Fr. Jacques Hamel, by the persecuted Christians in Nigerian, and by you and me. Those words are addressed to all who throughout the ages suffered for their faith and would continue to so suffer. When you are mocked by the media for hanging on to what they present as a dated morality, you are part of the persecuted Church. When you hold on to traditional family values and prefer responsibility over the forces that deify selfishness and self-gratification, you are a member of the persecuted Church. You will even suffer and be treated with scorn for telling your 19-year-old daughter that it isn’t right for her to move in with Tom without the benefit of marriage. You’ll be told that you have “archaic morals;” but that’s part of the persecution you’ll face for being a child of the kingdom.
The Lord’s promise that “through patient endurance, you’re saving your life” (Lk 21:19) should gladden your heart; for, according to Barclay, “a prison can be like a palace, a scaffold like a throne, the storms of life like summer weather, when Christ is with us.”
Fr. Chukwudi Jo Okonkwo