There’s an idea about God that we are all used to, which is that God loves and embraces us just as we are. There are plenty of scripture readings that tell us that, from the Prodigal Son to all those meals Jesus ate with sinners, they tell us there is nothing we need to do on this earth to merit God’s love, we have it without asking for it or earning it. And we should believe it, because it tells us that we have a relationship with God that can’t be broken, no matter how many times we fail in our end of that relationship. But there are a few…
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I think I speak for many Catholics when I say that gospel readings like the one we just heard really aren’t our style. All this talk about end-time persecutions, and wars that mean the world is just about over. This sounds like the kind of talk we usually leave to what we think of as more fringe-y Christians who think the end of the world is coming very quickly, and they are often people who seem to want it sooner rather than later, because it’ll be so great to be proved right about the winners and losers. But for the rest of us, we usually think something more like, I’ve…
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In my professional life, I’ve worked in a lot of different places and types of organizations, large and small, but looking back on it, there’s a pattern to a lot of those places that was pretty clear to me at the time and is even clearer looking back. And it’s this: The main concern of most of the people at most of those companies was not taking a risk; and in many cases, the main concern of the whole company was making sure that the people that worked there didn’t take any risks. It’s one of the very natural but kind of negative downsides of being even a little successful,…
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We know Jesus was a great teacher, but in one area at least he left his disciples and the early church very confused. And it’s this nagging question about the end of the world, when it would happen, and exactly what would happen when it did. That particular question is almost entirely off of our radar in real life today, because our view of the end of the world is entirely different from the one we heard in today’s gospel. For us, that end is something that’s so far off in the future it’s not worth planning for, it’s a misty future time when planetary forces we barely understand gradually…