SundayGospelReflection.org

Gospel Reflection 20061119

Catholics have insisted that salvation comes to us by God's grace and our cooperation with it. That's a blend of faith and works!Back in the 1500s Martin Luther and his followers declared sola fide! Faith alone! That is, we are saved by grace alone. Nothing we do can earn our salvation. The Roman Catholic theological response to Luther's fundamental criticisms came only decades later, in the Concil of Trent. Trent acknowledged the freedom of God's grace but insisted that our works do contribute to our salvation, even though our ability to do good works is due to God's grace. During the 20th century, breakthroughs in biblical studies brought Catholic and Protestant scholars closer. Formal dialogues began between Catholics and other Christians in the 1960s. On the eve of the 2,000th anniversary of Jesus' birth, Catholic and Lutheran theologians have found common ground in describing how grace works in our lives. The declaration acknowledges that good works are a genuine response to God's grace, not the cause of it.

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GOSPEL: Mark 13:24-32

Jesus said to his disciples: “In those days after that tribulation the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the ‘Son of Man coming in the clouds’ with great power and glory, and then He will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky. Learn a lesson from the fig tree. When its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves, you know that summer is near. In the same way, when you see these things happening, know that He is near, at the gates. Amen, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

"It is not about what you plan to do tomorrow it is about what you do today." This sound bite slams into almost every part of our culture. After all should we not have almost every kind of insurance that you can think of, every kind of protection against financial loss? Should we not save for tomorrow's retirement, tomorrow's education? This kind of cultural teaching is why it is so hard to follow Jesus. It is almost hard to take Jesus seriously, we know that what he teaches is truth, yet I know I have followed these culture teachings. This gospel is just another reminder that the truth will someday catch up with all of us and there will be a price to pay for half hearted discipleship. Our culture trivializes religion so that "church becomes a spiritual club, not a way of discipleship." From a cultural perspective the Cardinal went on to say, society is saying, "God can't make demands on us. Religion is a hobby. It's relegated to leisure time."Make no mistake you and I are in a spiritual war. That war is not against the culture, for we are required by our faith to attempt to change our culture. Did not Jesus work to change his culture? We are at war with Satan and he will use our culture to lead us away from salvation.In war the soldier struggles to avoid death by doing three basic things. One, the soldier learns everything he can about his job. Two, the soldier practices his training and skills over and over. Three, he knows beyond a doubt he is not a soldier of one. Soldiers depend on each other to accomplish their task.You and I need to follow these same steps in our every day war. We need to learn every thing we can about our faith. We need to, filled with that knowledge and the graces provided through the sacraments, to be faithful over and over to the Lord Jesus and all that He taught. Third, and perhaps this is the one thing we leave out most, we need to have the unity that will allow us to depend on each other, our fellow saints past and present to win this war.As Paul says in his letter to the Romans (14: 17-19) The kingdom of God is not a matter of eating or drinking, but of justice, peace and the joy that is given by the Holy Spirit. Whoever serves Christ in this way pleases God... Let us, then make it our aim to work for peace and to strengthen one another.There is a certain irony in the fact that we are in a spiritual war that is focused on peace. We are soldiers for Christ.
That battle between good and evil will be finally over when Jesus comes again. Then evil will be conquered forever and good will be victorious. Living now in the time between the first and second coming of Jesus each of us has the capacity - a second chance - to quicken the triumph of good over evil by allowing Jesus to have more control over our lives. We allow Jesus to have more control over our lives by spending time with him in prayer, by attending Mass every Sunday and as often as possible during the week, by receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation regularly, once a month if possible, by praying the Rosary, by praying together as a family. We allow Jesus more control over our lives when we live the way he asks us to live, when we are morally upright. When we allow Jesus to be the focus of our lives we are tipping the balance in the battle between good and evil a bit more towards the eventual victory of good over evil. We have a second chance at living, that second chance is now.This gospel was the final warning to the disciples as Jesus approached his own death on the cross. The warning was to live their life everyday as they had been taught, serving Jesus by serving others and not worrying about the end.We to are Jesus disciples and surely, when the day of judgment comes we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done, not how well we have spoken but how devoutly we have lived.
One of Satan’s biggest tactics is to try to convince Christians they are losers. Of course there is usually ample worldly evidence rolled out to support this. When there is no evidence, ridicule is poured out through the typecasting in movies and sitcoms.
Christians have usually been a minority culture. Those who control power and information, politics, and the media, in nearly every age have tried to discredit them. The intellectual elite have often tried to make them appear dumb or out of touch, or part of some extreme or radical “wing” of some kind. None of this is new and dates all the way back to the first century. But through the ages, Christians have outlasted, governments, educational institutions, and political systems.
So, there is good news as well as bad. The prophet promises glory to the faithful, and Jesus promises to return for his followers. And we know from Jesus’ life on earth what he disliked most: human suffering, especially the pain we bring on ourselves by our sinfulness.




One of the great philosopher-scientists of our day was the French priest Teilhard de Chardin. Near the end of his life, he wrote down his own theory about how and when the world will end.
This was his idea.
He said that at the dawn of creation God infused into living matter a mysterious creative force which directed the evolution of all life from the tiniest primitive form through all the evolutionary stages right up to the time when men and women came into existence. At that point, he said, evolution was, for the most part, finished. But, he said, there is another type of evolution that continues to go on within living things: a mental-social evolution, the goal of which is to bring all living things closer together and closer to God. When complete and total unity of living beings with one another and with God has finally been achieved a time he called the omega point, the point where the force of God's creative love finally unites all things to himself then, Teilhard says, the world will come to an end.
I don't know whether Teilhard is correct or not, but his theory is a fascinating one and it has captured the minds of many thinkers.
If Teilhard is correct, the world's end should not be seen as a great tragedy, not a cataclysm of destruction, but as a perfect & beautiful union which God intended from the time of creation
Whether or not Teilhard is close to the truth, it seems clear for other reasons that it is God's will that we do our part to bring about the unity of families, of communities, and of races; that we have an obligation to do all we can to remove the barriers of distrust and suspicion in politics, in education, in religion and in the home. After all, this was the very thing that Christ prayed for at the last supper when he said: "I pray that they may be all one, Father, as you are in me and I in you." It would be appropriate today for us to ask ourselves: have we been a help or a hindrance in God's plan for unity in the world?

The standard by which He judges us is the same as the standard He expects us to follow: the Truth of Christ as taught by His Church. Of course, the Truth is summed up in love of God above all things and of one’s neighbor as oneself, a love measured and determined, not by our instincts or feelings, but by the love of the Crucified Jesus.
Many of us –and I include myself- do not want to accept that each and all must answer ultimately to God for all that we are and do. The fascination of this life, especially in the fleeting days of youthful prowess, or in the dreams of human omnipotence in science and technology, or in the elusive hope of discovering the gene of eternity in the maze of the human genome, are all examples of how we might evade facing the inevitable: death, judgment, purgatory, heaven or hell (what we call the “last things” or “novissima”). The stunning antiquity of the expanding universe may make us think that we are set, not so much in timelessness, as in time without end. The cycles of life themselves seem to beckon eternity; and so the idea of reincarnation becomes attractive. Like the leaves which bud, blossom and fade, but which bud again, we might think of our own death as just a hibernation from which we will awaken again under our beloved blue sky. All of this can become an elaborate rationalization of our fear of death and judgment, or of the possibility that the cycle might be broken. It may also be fear of the reality of an eternity in which we can no longer hide who we are or what we have done, but in which the last detail of our personal truth is laid bare for all to see in an eternity beyond the times and places of this universe.
No matter how tragic or absurd or hard-hearted or hateful or blasphemous someone’s life may have become, if they can utter sincerely, even once only, and in extremis, “Lord, have mercy on me”, they will surely be among the elect. The Church has the process of canonization by which She declares a person of heroic virtue already to be in heaven. There is no such corresponding process regarding those who are, or might be, in hell for their “heroic vice”. But we must be careful not to conclude that, since we do not –for we cannot- know with infallible certainty if anyone has chosen hell for themselves, therefore hell does not exist.
We need, I believe, to understand that hell is not so much a place with dungeons, long-tailed devils and torture chambers; nor is it a den of iniquity where people can, at last, freely indulge all their sinful inclinations without restraint for eternity. The Devil is very pleased when we caricature hell and himself, for then we make it all laughable and worthy only of the contempt of modern sophistication. Hell is rather more akin to an inner state of mind and will which has finally and definitively decided that the truth and love of Christ are simply irrelevant for one’s own life, now and eternally. Hell demonstrates the frightening power of human freedom effectively to eliminate Christ from one’s existence – Christ, the source of that very freedom and existence. It is the ultimate form of selfishness and self-absorption which consider true love, the love of Christ, as the greatest form of pain and affliction. Clearly, no-one ends up in hell by surprise; deep-down the anti-Christs have, at some point in their journey, aligned themselves as His enemies and, alas, have resisted His merciful attempts to win them over to His standard of love.
Some will object that the doctrine of hell has no place in modern Catholicism with its emphasis on the mercifulness of God. They are mistaken.
To deny hell is to deny that man was made free, free to choose Christ or to reject Him. Of course, as it is Christ’s hope, so it is ours, that no-one would thus reject Him.
To deny hell is also to deny heaven, for the gracious offer of heaven must also be freely chosen; to deny hell is therefore to deny God, the One who is in heaven; it is also to deny sin and grace, for if there is no hell, there is no behavior that will bring me there and so no need for any divine assistance. The denial of hell in the name of some kind of philanthropic emancipation from the shackles of medieval religion is both arrogant and naïve. It also plays dangerously into the hands of those who would reinvent or abolish universal moral truth, and exalt in its place the so-called “ethics” which suit the ephemeral whimsicality of their particular generation. More subtly still, the denial of hell denies that human freedom is limited, and thus states that man can set for himself some kind of limitless and ever-expanding boundaries of freedom, whereby everything is permissible and nothing is accountable. Indeed, that was the first temptation of man: to transgress the limits of his own created freedom. Logically, yet paradoxically, it is when man persists in considering himself unlimited in his freedom, and therefore indifferent to the limits within which God has created him, that he freely follows the path which leads all the way, broad and spacious, to hell. The motto of the citizen of hell reads: “There is no God except yourself: serve no-one else.” You will recognize here the phrase attributed in Scripture to Satan: “Non serviam. I will not serve.”
We fight with the arms of faith, the deadliest of which is Christ’s love working in us, for His love is stronger than death and hell.
There is no need to fear hell. With Christ, stand up against it and it will flee. At our own peril, however, do we court its advances, individually or socially, for if we let it gain unchallenged power over us, we will know in this life the bitter taste of its destructiveness and, in the next, of damnation. We cannot negotiate with hell; and, since we know neither the day nor the hour, we must surrender our lives now to the King of heaven, Christ Jesus the Lord.

Jesus says "the angels will gather the elect." Some people think they and only they are "the chosen, the elect." Jesus turned the idea of being chosen on its head. Christ mixed with all the wrong people. Christ would be found with prostitutes and sinners, foreigners and strangers. By his death and resurrection Christ made it crystal clear, God loves everyone, without exception.We must be careful. It's so easy to get the wrong idea when we read the Bible. Some people conclude God lacks compassion, or think the Bible calls us to do crazy things, or get some idea that we, and only we, are chosen by God.
St. ThérPse of Lisieux hits the bulls-eye when she said: God wants me to be a saint, and I want to be a saint. If both God and I want it, it will happen. Whether we personally are enjoying good times or are now in troubled times, we might check to make sure we are being faithful to God. God wants us to be a saint, we know God will be faithful to us.We could take an inventory about how faithful we are. Perhaps about our ethical standards. Sometimes we fudge. We start living a false ethic. We justify ourselves by saying, "it's O.K. if we don't get caught;" or "everyone does it." We need to take an inventory of our Christian life. Are we following high ethical standards, or doing what we think we can get away with? Are we always faithful with our prayers, or only praying when we want a favor from God? We take an inventory: Do we actually live by the ethical standards of a Christian?Our time is now. St. ThérPse said, Both God and I want me to be a saint. Question is, are we as faithful to God and God is to us. We check how we are doing, whether we are we doing our part to become the saint God wants us to be. At the same time, our world sometimes seems out of control. Sometimes our lives are a burden. But, we must never loose our faith: God is still in control. Even when it takes us some time to figure out just how God is looking out for us.

“God won’t ask the square footage of your house. He will ask how many people you helped who didn’t have a house.
God won’t ask how many fancy clothes you had in your closet. He will ask how many of those clothes you gave away to those who didn’t have any.
God won’t ask how many material possessions you had. He will ask whether those material possessions dictated your life.
God won’t ask what your highest salary was. He will ask if you trampled over any people to obtain that salary.
God won’t ask how much overtime you worked. He will ask did you work overtime for your family.
God won’t ask how many promotions you received. He will ask what you did to promote others.
God won’t ask what your job title was. He will ask did you perform your job to the best of your ability.
God won’t ask what your parents did to help you. He will ask what you did to help your parents.
God won’t ask what you did to help yourself. He will ask what you did to help others.
God won’t ask how many friends you had. He will ask how many people you were a friend to.
God won’t ask what you did to protect your rights. He will ask what you did to protect the right of others.”
(Unfortunately I do not know the source of this poem)

Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. (Cf. Lk 19:8; Mt 24:12.) The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth (Cf. Lk 21:12; Jn 15:19-20.) will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh. (Cf. 2 Thess 2:4-12; 1 Thess 5:2-3;2 Jn 7; 1 Jn 2:18, 22) (CCC 675)

We ask Jesus, "How do we prepare for dying?" He responds, "By living."
The Lord is present anywhere people treat each other with gentleness, generosity, and thoughtfulness. This week why not see how many times you yourself can bring Jesus back to earth? Here's a proverb to motivate you. "I sought my God; my God I could not see. I sought my soul; my soul eluded me. I sought my neighbor, and I found all three."


The world has not changed all that much, and yet, it has. The major change in the world is that with Jesus Christ there is hope. There is hope that war will not have the last word. There is hope that starvation will become a bad memory. There is hope that racism and sexism will not in the end dance a jig together. There is hope that oppression will not have a lasting foothold over the vulnerable. There is hope that those who do evil will not prevail. Evil is not part of God’s plan. But we are part of that plan. The visions we heard today rely on us to take a role in the conquest of the Kingdom. We are assured that if we take up the battle
of good against evil, good will prevail and we will join in the triumph of God’s forces. Listen to the “then” section of the Gospel. “Then you will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds with great power and glory.” That’s the Good New, the Gospel. We will see triumph of goodness and be present as the Lord gathers his own to himself. Believing in the Lord and hoping in this promise, we turn our attention to the work at hand: preaching the Gospel through our words and deeds, even to those in darkness. Even when we feel ourselves engulfed by darkness. Still, we proclaim the Gospel, for we believe that light is coming. We do not know when. We do not know where. But we do know the he, the Lord of Light is coming. And so we continue to pray in the prayer he taught us, “Thy Kingdom Come.”


At any moment you and I can turn toward God - or turn away from him. That state of flux will not last forever. Jesus warns us there will come a final day, a final moment. Early Christian writers compared our present life to the moist clay on a potters wheel. While still wet and pliable, the potter can form the clay into almost any shape. But when he places the clay in the fire, it retains that shape forever. The fire is death. At the moment of death we will either humbly face God or self-righteously turn away from him - forever. The choice is stark. But we are not completely alone. Jesus wishes to help us. He gives us his word - and his grace through the sacraments. More than we desire it ourselves, he wants us to be part of his elect.


Today we pray for the gift of receiving the Spirit of Jesus, and thereby the grace of unconquerable hope. For one who has received his Spirit, there is no hopeless situation--the power of God's reign is supreme on earth as it is in heaven.

The criterion for entry into God's kingdom is so radical in its simplicity: "...whatever you did for one of these least brothers [or sisters] of mine, you did for me...whatever you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me" (25:31-46).

with integrity and faith we should follow the words of Holy Scripture and obey God’s commandments.
Each human being, while he or she is here on earth, should try to be more perfect everyday. This earthly life is a preparation for the kingdom that God has prepared for us.
“Will I see the end of this world?” The readings do not give us the answer to that question. But they do tell us what that end will be like, even though we may not live to see it. They tell us that many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake. Some shall live forever and others will be condemned and cast into everlasting horror and eternal disgrace.
Are any of us here concerned at all about facing Christ on Judgment Day? Well, if we're not, we ought to be and if we are, we should realize that Judgment Day is every day. What takes place at death will only be a continuation of how we behave each day. The final 'yes' or 'no' to God is worked out in the little things that come our way every moment. So where we spend eternity is completely dependent on us. God doesn't send us anywhere-we choose where we want to end up. If any of us know people who aren't concerned at all about where they're going to spend eternity, let me give you a few observations about hell. Hell's deepest essence is anguish, agony, hate, frustration, sorrow, sadness, regret and, most of all, misery. The misery of knowing that things could have been different if I only had chosen to do things differently. Knowing that I and I alone am the one to blame for being in hell. Hell is a fate far worse than fire and brimstone. It's the realization that "I" could have prevented it-I and no one else. C. S. Lewis probably expressed this idea better than anyone. "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done'".
On a personal level, we make daily sacrifices in the living temples of our bodies, on the altar of God living within us, when we give up our self-seeking interests, our pleasures and our own will to do what pleases God and our neighbour. For “you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you” (1 Corinthians 3:16, 2 Corinthians 6:16).
The world in which we live can undermine our trust in God. It is easy to become attached to things of this world, even though they pass away, disappear, vanish, and give us only a fleeting pleasure or a temporary security. Since our heart is made for God, for the infinite, when we become attached to something not of God, the result is fear. This is a fear of the future, and a fear of the unknown. But with God, we know the ending, and we know what awaits us. Listen to those words: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” All that we see and enjoy around us will pass away, but not Christ’s promises, namely the promises of eternal life -- of paradise. Be not afraid to hope in God.
Help me to overcome my fears by placing all of them in your hands knowing that you hold the solution.



We must not make the mistake some of the fundamentalists do and interpret these passages literally. However, we must not make the opposite mistake of dismissing them as “nothing but” poetry. The truth is Heaven and Earth may indeed pass away, but not before the Final Resolution in which good triumphs over evil an life over death. We don’t know when or how that will happen. Those issues really don’t matter. What does matter is that Jesus and his true followers will finally win.

While we desire to know the date and place of the final ending or “second coming”, Jesus encourages us to keep living towards our eternal existence. The “when” is “now”.
Soon, in a little while, the Lord Jesus will return to earth to judge the living and the dead. What I say here is true: for Jesus can return to earth at any time. Jesus himself said: "But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." Does this frighten us? Why? Don't we have confidence in he who is to judge us? Isn't Jesus our advocate with the Father? Mary, his Mother and our Mother, is she not at his side to intercede on our behalf?

Today, in this Sunday's Gospel, does Jesus not give us signs in order that, when he will come, we will be ready to welcome him? Is this not a sign of kindness and mercy? If the Lord had decided to punish us for all eternity, there is no doubt that he would return unexpectedly, without warning. But no. The Lord is good and he gives us signs which will announce his return: it is up to us to be watchful. If we are not, if we do not await him, then surely he will condemn us for all eternity...

Bottom line: God's election does not eliminate human freedom. Our choices, however small they might appear, have eternal consequences. From these and other verses in the Bible, you get the idea that our salvation is a foregone conclusion - that God already knows who will be saved. At the same time, Jesus calls for a personal decision. He tells us, for example, to "learn a lesson from the fig tree." He is not talking about the kind of lesson you have to learn to pass an exam. This lesson prepares us for something much more important: coming crisis. Jesus wants us to make sure we are on the right side. In other words, we will soon have to make a decision. As Catholics we believe in both divine election and human choice. The Catechism teaches that "no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification." In the order of grace, "the initiative belongs to God." (#2010) At the same time the Catechism teaches that the grace of Christ is a not "rival" to human freedom. (#1742) On the contrary, his grace makes possible genuine inner freedom. If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed. Jn 8:36
"The difference between life and death is about a hundredth inch of rubber." Small things can have enormous consequences. So it is with the choices you and I make each day. They might appear small, but deep down we know they are not trivial: they involve the difference between life and death of ones soul. Every moral choice molds a person's character, their inmost being. The choices that you make today are serious.


"From the fig tree learn its lesson." Did the Lord mean by this that his return would take place during the summer? "As soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near." It is possible: this would probably be the case. Is Jesus not the Sun of Justice? Now, it is during the summer that the sun shines in all its brilliance and power. But, will it be summer in the Northern hemisphere or in the Southern hemisphere? Jesus gives us many signs, but at the same time, he leaves us in relative uncertainty
When Jesus spoke about the fig tree in today’s Gospel, he may have thought of another fig tree -- the one that bore no fruit, withered, dried up, and died. We don’t know when Christ will pass by the fig tree of our life, looking to pick the fruit of our virtues. However, we can be assured of this: The time will come. The lesson: Bear fruit now; live virtue now.

"But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." Jesus indicates that he "the Son" doesn't even know
The message of the gospel is, do not to speculate on any end time. When we live our response (our faith) to Gods revelation of his love for us to its fullest, all of the other things of either of the end days of time or our personal end on earth will make little difference.

Through the readings of the Mass today, the Church reminds us that these are the last days of the liturgical year. Soon we will begin the Season of Advent. During this time of the year, the Church asks us to stop and think, to prepare ourselves, as always, not only for the last times, when the Lord will come in glory, but also for our own end, though we do not know when that will be.
Only God knows when the days of which Jesus speaks will occur.
in his human nature, Jesus could not grasp the infinite wisdom of God. He was like us in everything, except sin. Because of this, as a human being, he did not know when those last days would come. But he was sure, and we should also be sure, that the last times will come.


Each generation of men and women expects Jesus to return to earth. The first Christians awaited him with a firm hope (cf. 1 Thess. 4:17). Many generations were disappointed because this promise of the return of the Lord has not yet been fulfille

posted by Mike Young @ 6:22 AM