MENE, TEKEL, and PERES.
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| Sunset and the Pacific Ocean |
You’re heard the expression, “the handwriting on the wall?” It refers to today’s story from the Book of Daniel and neatly encapsulates its meaning – Doom! The phrase often appears in editorials as pundits predict the end of an era and the collapse of its leadership, especially if they are tyrants.
Recently another word has appeared, Teotwawki – an acronym for The End Of The World As We Know It. From the very beginning the Church has predicted the end of the world but refused to say when that might occur. It might be today; it might be next year; or it might be a million years from now. Who knows? But it’s important that we realize this world is passing away.
Around the end of the first millennium, in 1000 AD, people started to take more interest in the End and wondered if it might occur very soon. The recent millennium was shot through with millennial movements, and the first Franciscans were up to our ears in some of it. The fever arrived in the United States with the Millerites in the 1840’s and has persisted ever since. But the End of the World still stubbornly resists coming. Or at least it doesn’t come in the way we might expect.
Rather, we face The End Of The World As We Know It; everything that was familiar disappears and each aging generation finds itself living in a strange world. We experience Teotwawki, and not once; but over and over. In the early 1970’s Alvin Toffler coined the phrase, “Future Shock” to describe the feeling we have of living in a foreign culture. We experience continual “culture shock,” although we live in our own native land, often very close to where we were born.
So what do MENE, TEKEL, and PERES mean today? Does the current “great recession” signal the end of American dominance? Does political gridlock in Washington DC signal the end of the American experiment? Does weird weather portend climate change or an imminent ice age? Do the resurgence of Islam and the rise of fundamentalism mean the return of religious wars and the end of the Enlightenment?
Who can read the handwriting on the wall? And what does it mean for me and my loved ones? Saint Paul reassures us:
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose….
… in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8
… in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8
It is good for me to read/hear this Old Testament reading again. Fr. Joe had a similar message in his homily this morning. The end of the world as we know it. How true, every day. Life is full of changes. That is about all we can be sure about.
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