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Live
Letters Thirty-Second
Sunday in Ordinary Time |
The Catholic Telegraph
November 8, 2002Jesus had taught His followers that, although the kingdom of God had already begun in Him, there was a final stage of it that was still to come. He Himself would return from heaven triumphantly to judge the living and the dead and to unite all of creation with the life of the Trinity. Jesus’ teaching would not be set down in writing in the gospel accounts for more than twenty years after the composition of First Thessalonians, but the teaching would have been presented orally to the Thessalonians by Paul and his colleagues.
Jesus’ promise that He would return again in glory (a return that theologians refer to as the parousia or final presence of the Lord) was the source of some questions in the early Church. Most Christians of the first generation or so (including Paul, at least during the early years of his ministry) seem to have looked for the coming of Christ in their own lifetime. What they wanted to know was how they could know that it was drawing near. What signs would indicate its coming? Another question that arose, especially as the years went by and some of the earliest believers died without experiencing the parousia, was whether those who had died would somehow be deprived of their participation in the Lord’s glorious return.
Paul deals with the first of these questions in chapter five of First Thessalonians. We will hear his answer next Sunday. The second question is the subject of the end of chapter four that we read from on this Sunday.
Paul begins by assuring the Thessalonians that their attitude toward their loved ones who had died should be different from the attitudes of non-believers, i.e., those "who have no hope." Believers who have died ("fallen asleep") will be united with Christ who not only died but also rose from the dead.
He goes on to assure them, with full apostolic authority, that being alive at the time of the parousia will not bring with it any particular benefit that those who have died will not enjoy. When the Lord returns in glory in the midst of angelic voices and the sounds of the celestial symphony, those who are already dead will rise from their graves. Those who are living will be joined with them to be united with the Lord. All will be with the Lord forever. This prospect should be a source of confidence and comfort for them all.
We Christian believers of the twenty-first century do not seem to make as much of the prospect of the Lord’s second coming as did the Christians of the first generations. True, in the Creed we still profess our belief that Christ "will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and His kingdom will have no end." But one suspects that not many of us spend much time worrying about whether that coming will occur today, or in the near future.
Yet this article of our faith is not without meaning even for us. We may not be much concerned about what is going to happen to whom when the end comes, but we still need to acknowledge that there will be an end, that our present world only expresses God’s interim plan, that there is something much more complete, much more final, much more perfect that is still to come. We also need to be aware that Jesus promises us final justice, that, when He comes again in glory, every human being and every human situation will be subject to and finally evaluated by the judgement of God. We also need to remember that our final happiness will be constituted by our being together with and in the Lord and that, by implication, those who have rejected the Lord will find that they have placed themselves beyond the pale of ultimate fulfillment.
What Paul tells the Thessalonians in this reading also offers us reassurance in our concern for our loved ones who have died. We Catholics tend to be careful about our dead. We not only see to the celebration of appropriate rituals of death and burial. We also pray for our dead and have Masses offered for them and look forward to being with them in the final kingdom. It’s as if we instinctively know that they are somehow already with the Lord and that that contact with the Lord offers some kind of contact with us who are still here and still in touch with the Lord in a transitory and earthy way. The final state, in which all of us "shall always be with the Lord" has somehow already begun for them and we somehow maintain contact with them through the Lord.
The Church’s teaching about the second coming and about our ongoing relationship with those who have preceded us in death is important because it keeps us aware of the relativity of our present existence. We are indeed called to proclaim Christ’s salvation to the world around us. We are expected to extend the life and ministry of Christ here and now. But the world around us and the here and now are only the prelude to the final state that God has in mind for us. Earthly effort and suffering, success and failure in the course of our life, separation from our loved ones in death are only momentary episodes in the drama that God has written for the world. Jesus’ teaching about the parousia invites us to look forward to something more, when "the voice of an archangel" has spoken and "the trumpet of God" has sounded.
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Conversation Questions.
What part does the second coming of Christ play in my spirituality?
What closeness do I feel to my loved ones who have died?
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