Here He Comes!
From today's readings:
"Stand firm and hold fast to the
traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of
ours.... The Lord comes to judge the earth.... Woe to you, scribes and
Pharisees, you hypocrites...."
As Christians, we faithfully await the
Parousia, Christ's coming in glory at the end of earthly time. Jesus Himself,
in the days before His crucifixion, spoke about His future coming at quite some
length, although He purposely omitted many details, such as the precise date He
would return!
From the earliest times, there thus has
been wild speculation about those details which Christ, for reasons He knows
best, chose not to reveal. Writing to the Thessalonians in the mid 50's, St. Paul insisted that
faithful Christians need to be on guard against preposterous preoccupation with
the Parousia, and disastrous delirium about the end times.
Paul's warning is not to say, of course,
that Christians should just forget about preparing for the Day of the Lord - in
fact, it's crucial that such preparation be done by every follower of Christ,
but always, as St. Paul maintains, in the spirit of hope and with the
commitment to "stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were
taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours."