Is the End Nigh?
Br Augustine questions whether the Second Coming is all that different to the First.
Readings: Apocalypse 18:1 – 19:9; Luke 21:20-28
The following homily was preached to the student brothers during Compline. You can listen here or read below:
It is perplexing when people prematurely sing Christmas songs and say Ho, ho, ho. We have yet to celebrate Advent. Let us have our fill of the fearsome apocalyptic readings of the end-times these few weeks and then move on to our celebrations. But my tendency is mistaken. It is tempting to separate out the no, no, no! of the scary second coming of Christ from the ho, ho, ho of Christmas, to split God’s justice from his mercy. But that is not the Gospel. Often, the stress on the differences between the first and second comings obscures the similarities between them. In these weeks, the Church anticipates the second coming precisely to prepare us to celebrate the first coming of Christ.
The similarity is this. In both comings, Christ delivers judgement. His judgement is love: God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, when we were dead through our sins, made us alive together with Christ (Ephesians 2:4-5). This is judgement because it gives us justice. It sets us right with God. In the first coming, God himself restores to us the relationship with him which we had lost and could not ourselves regain. In light of this love, Jesus’ first coming becomes an image of the second. At the first coming, Christ comes in the lowliness of human flesh and offers himself on the cross. There were signs in the sun and moon, when the sky grew dark; the heavenly powers were shaken, when the veil of the Temple was rent; there was vengeance and wrath against the nations, when the reign of Babylon, the prince of this world, was destroyed; the Son of Man put all things under his feet, when he was lifted on the cross. The fearsome pronouncements in the book of Revelation have already come to pass. That was our judgement, when we saw how much God loves us. God’s judgement is his Word, written in flesh and blood and spelt out on the cross. That was our judgement, when he set us straight with him, not because he owed anyone anything, but because he wanted to restore what he had given us from the start – our friendship with him. I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Matthew 9:13). In the first coming, God lets us see himself as we are, so that at the second coming, we shall see him as he is (1 John 3:2).
Jesus does not end his apocalyptic pronouncements without a note of hope. He tells us to raise our heads because your redemption is drawing near (Luke 21:28). The end is here; it has already begun. After all, we read these apocalyptic texts for the same reason we celebrate Christmas – we are looking forward to the morning of our resurrection.
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel: he has visited his people, and redeemed them (Luke 1:68).
Image: Ordination Card of Thomas Mannion OP (Augustine Chen OP, 2023)
