“So also Christ, offered once to take away the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to take away sin but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await him” Hebrews 9:28

People are forever predicting the end of the world. However, as the years moved on and Jesus did not return, their understanding began to evolve so that by the time John’s Gospel was written, probably about seventy years after Jesus’ death, they had started to understand things differently, but that didn’t change their emphasis on vigilance, on staying awake, and on being ready for the end. But now, that invitation to stay awake and live in vigilance was related more to not knowing the hour of one’s death. But Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that our real worry should not be that the world might suddenly end or that we might unexpectedly die, but that we might live and then die asleep, that is, without really loving, without appropriately expressing our love, and without tasting deeply the real joy of living because we are so consumed by the business and busy pressures of living that we never quite get around to fully living. It is a question of having love and reconciliation as our chief concerns, of thanking, appreciating, affirming, forgiving, apologizing, and being more mindful of the joys of living in the human community and within the sure embrace of God. The end of the world shouldn’t concern us, nor should we worry excessively about when we will die. What we should worry about is in what state our dying will find us. As Kathleen Dowling Singh puts in her book, The Grace in Aging: “What a waste it would be to enter the time of dying with the same old petty and weary thoughts and reactions running through our mind.” Still, what about the question of when the world will end? Perhaps, given the infinity of God, it will never end. Because when do infinite creativity and love reach their limit? When do they say: “Enough! That’s all! These are the limits of our creativity and love!” Let us wait gratefully in love as we continue practicing that love as Christ our Lord did.

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