33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – 17 November 2024

The year now, of course, has the sense of beginning to wind up.  The HSC exams are over, university exams will be over in the coming week or so, the committees we might be on are having their final meetings for the year, the diaries are filling up with all the end of year social activities that we try and fit in before Christmas.  So, too, the Church’s liturgical year is coming to its end.  Next week it comes to its finality in the celebration of Christ the King, and then we begin a new year in the life of our Church with the season of Advent.

A year ends, a year begins.  This is the natural rhythm of our Church’s calendar.  Even though we have started to plan our 2025 calendars, there is a part of us that thinks, “Don’t even talk to me about next year! Let’s just survive this year first! Let’s get over Christmas so that we can catch our breath in January, and then we will worry about next year.”  And yet, in our Church’s calendar there is no real ‘down time’: the year ends, the year begins – all in the space of a day.  It is as if the end and the beginning can’t be thought of as apart from one another. In the end is the beginning.  It is one of the most important Christian insights particularly when it comes to the experience of death in which we hold both end and beginning together as the one moment.

And so, as we do come to the end of our liturgical year we are invited also to look forward.  In a marvellous way the readings in our liturgy speak of the ‘end times’.  But the Scriptures speak of the end times only as they also speak of ‘new times, of times beginning.’ When ancient writers sought to give this paradox expression they would use the very particular technique of apocalyptic imagery – vivid imagery which spoke of both destruction and construction, darkness and light together.  It is important for us to appreciate this so that we might avoid a fundamentalist interpretation of ancient texts. Indeed, the texts are not even speaking so much a future event in time that might in some way be predicted chronologically.  Rather, they are speaking of what is happening now in and through our encounter with Jesus, for they realised that in the encounter with Jesus, in the experience of his death and resurrection, something had ended, something had begun.  In fact, we are the people of the ‘end time,’ those who because of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus live in the intersection between something passing away and something new coming into being. Christian life is lived in the intersection of time. We are those who live between that which has already occurred in the event of Christ and, at the same time, is yet to come in its full realisation –  those who live between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet.’ This is why both our sense of memory and our sense of vision are so important for us, never one without the other.  We look back, and at exactly the same time, we look forward.  And it is this paradox that shapes our lives as Christians.

Pope Francis himself has alluded to this peculiar character of Christian life, remarking that we are not living through an era of change, but a change of era.  And with every change of era past and the future are held together.  If we are to live in such an intersection well then we must learn to live with what he identified as humility, selflessness and with beatitude.  We must let go, with humility, of trying to cling on to what has been, or to our own influence, or to own set way of thinking how things should be, because as he says, “God’s glory that shines in the humility of the stable in Bethlehem or in the dishonour of Christ’s cross always surprises us.”  We must look outwards, avoiding, as he said, “remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe.”  We have to go out and fight with a faith that is revolutionary because of the inspiration that comes from the Spirt of Jesus.  As he went onto say, “Do not look down on life from the balcony, but rather get involved, immerse yourselves in the broad social and political dialogue . . . wherever you are, never construct walls or frontiers, but instead open squares and field hospitals.”  And thirdly we must do this, with ears and eyes open to where blessing exists, all those moments, often hidden and anonymous where we encounter genuine trust, love and hope in the lives of people so that we live as a Church joyful, with the face of a mother who understands, accompanies and caresses. “A Church with these three features – humility, selflessness and beatitude – is a Church that recognises the action of the Lord in the world, in culture, in the daily life of people,” taught the pope.

We are the people of the end times.  People who hold both the memory of what God has done in our midst through the presence and power of Jesus, and who because of this look forward with expectant anticipation of what is possible. We look back, we look forward.  And it is this tension that makes us come alive as a people of the Resurrection.  We are never afforded the luxury of complacency, or passivity or of inertia.  This is so for us as community of faith, just as it is for us in our own personal journeys.  Because of this, “Christian teaching is not a closed system” Pope Francis says, “incapable of generating questions, doubts and uncertainties, but it is living, it knows how to disturb and to encourage. Its face is not rigid, it has a body that moves and develops, it has tender flesh; Christian teaching is called Jesus Christ.”

In the end this is all we have – the very person of Jesus, the One who stands before us, in utter simplicity, and calls us into ever new beginnings.