Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 158

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/111812.cfm

MSF Picnic
2012

Heaven and earth will pass away, 
but my words will not pass away. 
But of that day or hour, no one knows, 
neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

I don't suppose any of my faithful readers are even vaguely curious about the Mayan calendar and the end of the world on December 23. We've seen dozens of these doomsday predictions come and go. But the fact is every day is the end of the world for someone, and we're all seeing the End Of The World As We Know It. The older I get the less familiar the world becomes to me. 

There's a marvelous little museum in Jennings Louisiana. In 1949 a farmer who owned and operated a country store for his sharecroppers decided he was too old to bother with the business anymore. He locked up the building and left it standing on his property, as it was, without a going-out-of-business sale. The food rotted but, amazingly, everything else remained as it was. Despite the perpetual humidity of that dank environment, the clothes, toys, dolls, pots, pans, tools and farm implements remained in mint condition. 

Twenty years later his family decided to box all the merchandise and store it, and there it sat for another twenty or more years, until it was rediscovered and sold to the City of Jennings. They moved it all into an old downtown building and opened the W.H. Tupper Museum. There are Shirley Temple dolls, toys made in Japan, sun bonnets for ladies and ties for men -- all with original 1948 price tags. Collectors of every sort visit the store, make outrageous bids, and are politely refused. To enter the museum is to step back in time to 1949, and a very different world -- a world that ended a long time ago. 

Some religious people will insist, "That's not what Jesus meant." And they're partly right. Jesus meant that we should be prepared to be judged by the Lord of Justice at every moment. And we are indeed being judged at every moment, for He is always near, at the door, and those who ignore the Lord do so at their peril. 

November is the month to remember the last things: death and judgement, heaven and hell. That may be why we hold so many elections and referendums in November. This is the season of assessment and evaluation. Is our government serving us well? Do our representatives still represent us? Where have we been and where are we going?  As time and opportunities race past us, are we choosing wisely, in accordance with God's plan for us? 

Next Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King, a feast that was inaugurated by Pope Pius IX as the age of kings and emperors was ending. The Pope, fearing that even his triple crown might be taken, reminded the world that the Lord is king. Three quarters of a century later Pope Paul VI donated his triple crown to the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC, and started wearing the miter of a bishop. It is a more modest head wear, better suited to his religious authority and stripped of the trappings of worldly empire. 

As the Church prays through this Year of Justice, we ask the Lord of History to guide us in our daily decisions. We don't have any clear idea of the future, or how the Church will fit into it. But we are sure that the Father will rule over us, Jesus will walk with us, and the Holy Spirit will guide us in The Way.