Sunday, November 17th, 2024 – Thirty - third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle B Readings: Daniel 12:1-3, Psalm 16 “You are my inheritance, O Lord!”, Hebrews 10:11-14, 18, Mark 13:24-32

                                   UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD
     Final results can leave us all anxious: competitive sports, the end of a school year, a business enterprise in which all is waged, and the end of the world. The first Christian community believed that the second coming of Christ was close and that He would come as the great inquisitor. Today's liturgy looks at the end of life and to what will occur later, with a clear recommendation: to be prepared. The end times will be difficult times: "For some, the verdict will be that of salvation, but for others - it will be condemnation".
 
Sisters and brothers:
 
1. When we suddenly find ourselves in difficult times, due to the mysterious or to the unknown, these times may provoke a mixture of fear and hope. This occurs to us when we glimpse the imminence of death. Death is not the end of life. We do not live to die, as the philosophers sentence us; but we live and die to live in fullness, as our faith implies and as hope manifests.
 
Jesus speaks to us today about the world's end and our final judgment. The Lord will come as a judge. In light of this truth, we can face our human existence in two ways: that of the follower of Christ who renounces all - in order to live love without measure; or we may choose to live life enjoying all the pleasures of the present time - as if there was nothing to follow after death.
 
2. In light of faith, the end of the world is the triumph of life over death. So what will happen to us? How will our life's efforts end, our struggles, our aspirations? Someone dared to affirm that - life is just a brief parenthesis between two nothings, if all we expect from life is nothing. So what final meaning do all our struggles, efforts, and confrontations make?
 
If we see all in the light of faith,a ray of hope will ignite. Thus life, history, and our world - are not just a useless passion; we are not trapped, nor are we yoked to an endless well where an eternal repayment is due. There is salvation.
 
3. When will this all occur? Revelation speaks of an imminent event, that "is already at the door". It could occur at any moment. For the time is brief. The end of the world is not its destruction, but its destiny. In light of the final event, all the values of life appear in their just dimension. We look with bravery at this destiny that expects us to understand how it is imminent. We decide our future every day, and that is why we should prepare ourselves as of now. When will that end be? When we want it to come, when we are ready and willing to make it a reality when we live as Jesus taught us, in accordance with the beatitudes.
 
Brothers and sisters: From today’s Gospel, we must retain in us the invitation to walk according to the Gospel, supported by the saving Word of Jesus Christ, without seeking to know the day or the hour. Our actual call is a call to faithfulness; like the first Christians, we are called to be faithful in the hour of persecution, and then the fullness will come, but it will come when Our Father wills it.
Source: ePriest.com / Best Practices and Homily Resources for Catholic Priests