The Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas

Lectionary: 204

Children, it is the last hour;

and just as you heard that the antichrist was coming,

so now many antichrists have appeared.

Thus we know this is the last hour.

When I came to, the first thing I asked, "Is this really happening?"

The EMT assured me it was really happening. It took me a minute to remember I had been bicycling on a country road, several miles from home; and a few more minutes to realize I was lying on my back in an ambulance.

It was not exactly an out-of-body experience but I was glad to find myself back in my body, despite a host of injuries yet to be determined.

Several months later a cop told me he had been there at the crash site. As he watched the helicopter take off, another rescue worker said, "He'll never make it. A guy gets hit by a truck going sixty miles an hour. He'll have a lot of internal bleeding. He's a dead man."

Fortunately, at the time, nobody told me that. I just knew my day had been seriously interrupted and it might be awhile before I got back to work.

You never know when that "last hour" might arrive.

On this last day of the year, Saint John reminds us of time and its passage. We are, after all, creatures of time. We have a presentiment of eternity. There ought to be such a thing but we can't really imagine it. All of our scientific research and accumulated knowledge tell us only of time. There is past, present and future time; but no hint of eternity in our material world. And yet it ought to be there.

Our faith tells us that Jesus has come from eternity and the Eternal Father, to lead us into Eternal Truth. A "man like us in all things but sin," he too was subject to time, an Earthling made of this world's mud. His first century world was much smaller than mine. I've been to Australia; he never heard of the place. I've seen pictures of the Earth from outer space; he would have assumed the Earth is flat. Like me, he was a man of his time. 

But there was that eternal aura about him. To meet Jesus, to experience in his presence a healing of body, mind, and spirit, was to know in an instant of time the height, width, and depth of eternity. There was in his company an assurance that "We are bound for glory," and it surpasses anything this world can offer or imagine.

We have tasted eternity and cannot help but want another, deeper draught of it. Saint John must then step in and warn us, "...many antichrists have appeared." They promise what you crave to know. They guarantee shortcuts to satisfaction, fulfillment and endless bliss. Do not follow them!

There is only one Christ. You'll have no doubt when he returns; his glory will sweep like the dawn from one end of the sky to the other, in the twinkling of an eye. Until then, do not believe in those who make such claims. Your faith will recognize what your eyes cannot see, what your mind cannot comprehend.

A year ends; we begin another. We are creatures of time with faith in eternity. We'll know it when we see. In the meanwhile, we wait and keep faith.