The Day is at Hand

In today’s gospel, Jesus speaks the coming of the Son of Man. Noah had been commissioned by the Lord to build an ark. The people did not know that a great flood was coming. “They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day that Noah entered the ark.” They had no idea what was coming. They went about their normal lives, not prepared for what was coming.

Jesus says, “So will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man.”

No one except the Father, not even the Son, knows when the Second Coming will happen. It will be a surprise. We should not assume we are guaranteed a place in Heaven for “one will be taken, and one will be left.”

Not everyone will be saved. “So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” Does this scare you?

How are we to be ready if we don’t know the hour? To answer this question we need to ask ourselves what does it mean to be ready.

To be ready we must, as Paul writes, “throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, let us conduct ourselves properly.”

Now is hour for us to “awake from sleep. For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.” We do not know the hour or the day but, as time passes, the hour is coming closer.

What does it mean to “throw off the works of darkness”? It means to set aside the “desires of the flesh.” There should be no more orgies, drunkenness, promiscuity, lust, rivalry, and jealous. These all belong to the evil one.

We must “put on the armor of light.” This light is from the Lord. We must seek the highest mountain for it is the Lord’s. There are many mountains that we can choose to dwell on. It is the Lord’s we seek. We long for the day when “All nations shall stream toward it.”

It takes effort to “climb the Lord’s mountain.” The good news is that we do not have to do it alone. When we seek the climb the Lord’s mountain, the Lord himself will help us. He will “instruct us in his ways” so that “we may walk in his paths.”

Isaiah speaks of the day when “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another.” We long for the day when there will be peace everyone. For this to happen, everyone needs to follow the Lord’s ways. “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!“

I asked before if the fact that the Son of Man will come at hour we don’t expect scared you. The possibility of ending up in Hell should scare us. Instead of letting the fear consume us, we should make it our motivation to live as the Lord calls us each and every day. With the Lord’s help, led by the Holy Spirit and the guidance of our guardian angel, we can follow the Lord’s path. When we do this, we will ready. We will have nothing to fear.

Peace,

Fr. Jeff