Nov.15, 2009: 33rd Sunday Ordinary (B)

About a month ago, I went to sign up for a membership at a gym not to far from Our Lady of Mercy. I was thinking to myself, "It's about time I need to get rid of my flabs and stop munching on snacks." I sat across from an employee of the gym in the office signing my gym contract, and he says, "What do you do for a living?" I had my clerical collar on. I replied, "I'm a Catholic priest." He said, "Well, I'm a Christian, and say, what do you think about the signs of the times? Do you think, you know, we're pretty close to the end times?" I'm thinking to myself, "If I believed that the end time was near, would I be worried about flabs on my belly?" But I didn't say that.

Another time at Walmart, a man stopped me by the potato chip aisle and asked, "Are you a pastor or something?" "I'm a Catholic priest." He then said, "What do you think about the year 2012?" I replied, "What about it?" He said, "You know, the ancient Mayan calendar says that the world will end on 2012? The pastor at my church showed us how the scripture proves that it's true." I was thinking to myself, "What kind of bible is he using? It doesn't give a date!"

This weekend, a movie by the title "2012" began showing. This is not a plug for that movie. But I'll give you a brief synopsis. Everything you know about potential hotspots of natural disasters in the world, well in this movie all those hotspots come true all at the same time. Whether it is the mega-earthquake along the California coast, a giant volcano eruption at the Yellowstone National Park, or the collossal tsunami that dwarfs even the mighty Everest Mountain, this movie will leave nothing to the imagination about the destruction that will be brought to the mankind as we know it. Are all these world scale destructions what Jesus had in mind when he told the disciples the following in today's gospel?

"In those days after that tribulation

the sun will be darkened,

and the moon will not give its light,

and the stars will be falling from the sky,

and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

"And then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in the clouds'

with great power and glory,

and then he will send out the angels

and gather his elect from the four winds,

from the end of the earth to the end of the sky."

It's unfortunate that some folks have tried to force Jesus' message to coincide with the ancient Mayan calendar the destruction and the end of the world in the year 2012. Jesus tells his disciples in our gospel today that "But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."It is also unfortunate that some folks have forced Jesus' message to mean that faithful will be some how vanish one day and the rest of the world will be "Left Behind."

By the way, if you subscribed to the views of the authors of "Left Behind" series, do you know who will be left behind? The Catholics, because they are not part of the faithful, as implied by the authors. Did you know that? Both of these 'visions' of the end of the world are incompatible with scripture. If you were to see that movie "2012" this weekend, at the end of the movie as you are exiting the theater, what impression are you left with? No matter how you lived your life, no matter what you have built up in this world, no matter how fervently you believed in Jesus, nothing matters; we're all going to die from the impending disasters. It sounds like a very happy movie, doesn't it? (Not)

Let me give you a very different take on this whole "end of the world" speculations. Several weeks ago, I have asked all of us to write two questions on a post-it note and place it where we will be reminded often. These were questions that Jesus will be asking us when we see Him in Heaven. Those were, "Are you sorry for your sins? Do you love me?" So whether God calls us tonight or in 45 years, we should always be ready to answer those two questions. I want to tell you about a young woman who was ready for those two questions. A parishioner from my previous parish wrote me an email with a portion of her daughter's speech at her high school graduation. Her daughter said at the graduation:

"Ten years from now we will look back on these past four years and think to ourselves, “Where did the time go?” We will also look back to the memories, the friends, and the teachers and remember how it was a turning point in our lives. We could not have asked for better teachers or for a better school.

I would personally like to thank our parents and teachers for helping us make it this far. They helped us a great deal along the way.

As freshman, we entered high school nervous and excited about the future of the next four years of our lives. As seniors, we will once again have that nervous and excited feeling for what the next four years will hold, whether that will be going directly into the work force, college, the military, trade school, or even marriage. Whichever path that each of us will take, we will always remember riding the bus home and passing a cow pasture or two, the Mohawks that swept across our senior boys’ heads this year, Friday night football games, late night baseball games, last-minute study cram sessions before a final exam, the chaos of homecoming week, the hours it took us girls to get ready for the prom, the warmth of our families, and the values taught to us by our parents and teachers..."

It sounds like this was a young woman who was ready for challenge and full of hope. Her mother told me that her daughter was strong in her Catholic faith and what was important for her were purity and holiness. That's how she was in high school and that's how she pursued college, too. When I arrived at my previous parish several months ago, I got a call early Friday morning saying that there was a death of a young woman. She along with four others were run over by a drunk driver at Southeastern Louisiana University. She and two others died on the spot. Few days later, I did her funeral attended by her family, her classmates and sorority sisters.

This young lady by the name of Beth Boudreaux and her family did not know the day or the hour when she was going to be called by Heavenly Father to depart this world. What her family and friends did know, however, was that Heavenly Father now has with Him a beautiful, holy soul who could do more in Heaven than here on earth. We firmly believe that we go from this perishable to imperishable world. Does it trouble us that earthquake will topple buildings, volcanoes will erupt, and tsunamis will engulf cities? Hollywood can conjure up destruction beyond our imagining. Yet, Hollywood's imagination falls way short of describing indestructible Heaven where our imperishable souls go to for eternity. What we should really focus on is whether we say yes to both, "Are you sorry for your sins? Do you love Me?"