November 13, 2022 (33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time)
/“Uncomfortably Comforted”
by Fr. Dominic DeLay, O.P.
[This is the text composed by the homilist prior to delivering the homily.]
Leave it to Jesus to ruin a good time. Some people are innocently admiring the temple when nosy Jesus tells them it’s all going to fall down. There he goes again. Jesus is always deconstructing our carefully constructed lives. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want us to get comfortable.
It works. His audience that day is troubled: “Teacher, when will this happen? And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?” When will people learn: never ask Jesus a question. Didn’t they realize they were inviting him to speak more doom and gloom? He warns of wars and insurrections, earthquakes, famines, and plagues.
We’ve seen all those things in our time, haven’t we? Plus another anxiety-inducing election. We might ask Jesus, “When will we know the results of the election?” But we Catholics are embarrassed at this talk of end times. Is this really something we believe? We might rather look around at the signs of doom all around us and ask Jesus, “You’re saying the end is coming any moment now?”
But he’s just getting started. He gets personal, telling us we’ll be handed over to the authorities. “You will even be handed over,” he says, “by parents, siblings, relatives, and friends, and they will put some of you to death.” And he keeps going, even though we’ve had enough and cut him off with the selection of today’s passage. He warns of the coming destruction of Jerusalem, followed by what he mysteriously calls the “times of the Gentiles.” He preaches about people dying of fright at horrific cosmic signs. He says – and is this a promise or a threat? – that the Son of Humanity will come “in a cloud with power and great glory.” Are you buying this, maybe at least a little nervous? Are you confused about the timeline? Me too. I think he wants it that way. Again, he’s shaking us out of our comfort and complacency.
The church serves up these end of times readings as we approach the end of each liturgical year. There are just two weeks left in the liturgical year, which begins anew with Advent, the Sunday after Thanksgiving this year. Advent is that peaceful time of preparation for the Christmas season, right? Except when it isn’t. Advent begins with yet another end of times gospel passage, although this time from Matthew’s perspective, since the new liturgical year is the year of Matthew. And the next two Sundays in Advent every year we’re treated to John the Baptist frightening us.
Each time we hear the end of the world readings, if we’re willing to listen, it feels like they’re coming true as we witness terrifying and catastrophic world events. Speaking of terrifying and catastrophic, the end of Thanksgiving break signals the beginning of the end of student sanity, I mean the end of the quarter. You’ll return from the break to be greeted by Week 9 with all the apocalyptic overtones that portends. Now are you scared?
While we Christians do await Jesus’ coming again, even if some of us think it sounds too scary or too quaint, we don’t know what that looks like. Jesus doesn’t mean for his various descriptions to be taken literally, and his contemporaries knew that he was speaking in the poetic imagery of the apocalyptic tradition. It turns out that Jesus doesn’t want to paralyze us with fear. He wants to shake us out of comfortable complacency. More important, he wants to reassure us. His contemporary audience knew that. We need to know that, too. While he doesn’t want us to be comfortable with complacency, he does want us to be comforted and confident, comforted that things will all work out in the end and confident that we can help make that happen. Jesus wants us to believe that ultimate peace and inclusion of all is assured so that we can and will act boldly in love.
We voted? Good for us. The elections are just part of our push to include everyone, especially the poor and vulnerable. What else can we do, who else can we be, to effect change in the world? The Catholic Church all across the globe continues its synod on synodality, our discussions about the importance of dialogue, listening, and inclusion. Themes that have emerged from around the world include the priority of our poor sisters and brothers, greater support for LGBTQ folks, increased recognition of those with disabilities, more, and more significant, decision-making roles for women, including the possibility of ordination, better support for pregnant women, greater inclusion for those divorced and remarried, and increased prevention of abuse and the covering up of abuse.
The powers that be might indeed seize us, if we act with enough love to provoke that. But if that happens, to use Jesus’ poetic language, he’ll give us irrefutable testimony and not a hair on our heads will be harmed. We know that such assurances might not literally be true, but we do know that Jesus walks with us every step of the way and that his promised peace will come one way or another. Jesus ends his apocalyptic preaching of assurance with this encouragement: “…stand straight and tall and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.”
At the end of Mass today/tonight, we’ll sing a song called “In the Day of the Lord.” We can sing, together, with full-throated confidence about that day, when justice will triumph, when we will be free from want and fear, free to live fully, when nations will gather together and walk in the light, when nations will beat their swords into plowshares and end war, one in peace, one in love.
