Memorial of Saint Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/082812.cfm

We ask you, brothers and sisters,with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling with him, not to be shaken out of your minds suddenly, or to be alarmed either by a 'spirit,' or by an oral statement, or by a letter allegedly from us to the effect that the day of the Lord is at hand. Let no one deceive you in any way.





Saint Paul's  two letters to the Thessalonians are the earliest documents of our Christian faith, and it appears that first generation church was preoccupied with the "second coming" of Christ. There are any number of ambiguous statements about the return of Jesus in the New Testament and the first missionaries had to cope with that mysterious ambiguity. How could they encourage that sense of high, even eager expectation and, at the same time, caution against foolishness?



Ross Douthat, in his book Bad Religion, how we became a nation of heretics, writes:

Mysteries abide at the heart of every religious faith but the Christian tradition is uniquely comfortable preaching dogmas that can seem like riddle, offering answers that swiftly lead to further questions, and confronting believers with the possibility that God passes all our understanding.Thus orthodox Christians insist that Jesus Christ was divine and human all at once, that the Absolute is somehow Three as well as One, that God is omnipotent and omniscient and yet nonetheless leaves us free to choose between good and evil....
And they propose a vision of holiness that finds room in God’s Kingdom for all the extremes of human life -- fecund families and single-minded celibates, politicians and monastics, queens as well as beggars, soldiers and pacifists alike.Time and again, in the early centuries Anno Domini, the councils of the Church had the opportunity to resolve the dilemmas and shore up the fragile syntheses -- to streamline Christianity, rationalize it, minimize the paradoxes and the difficulties, make it more consistent and less mysterious... (but) they chose the way of mystery instead.

Second Thessalonians illustrates how, from Day One, the Apostles initiated friends and strangers, Jews and gentiles into this mystery, how believers welcomed it and martyrs died for it. Saint Augustine, perhaps the greatest theologian of the Church after Saint Paul, welcomed the mystery of the Church despite the rationalism of his education and formation. 


Clearly, the mystery of God remains as an invitation and challenge for us today. In the face of much skepticism and some hostility from our contemporaries, we choose to live within enigma,  sheltered only by our sacraments.