The words of Jesus in today’s Gospel reading provide us with no answers to our problem. Here again, Jesus paints a gloomy picture of the end times, and yet the description of those times could very well describe just about any historical time period. What is unique about these calamites and signs when we see such things everyday? How can we possibly distinguish the end times from any other time?

When he was a priest in Munster, Germany, Pope Benedict XVI preached a series of sermons on the Advent season to university students there. One of his reflections is relevant to our present meditation: “What really torments us today, what bothers us much more is the inefficacy of Christianity: after two thousand years of Christian history, we can see nothing that might be a new reality in the world; rather, we find it sunk in the same old horrors, the same despair, and the same hopes as ever. And in our own lives, too, we inevitably experience time and again how Christian reality is powerless against all the other forces that influence us and make demands on us. And if, after our labor and efforts to live on the basis of what is Christian, we draw up the final balance sheet, then often enough the feeling comes over us that the reality has been taken away from us, dissolved, and all that remains in the end is just an appeal to the feeble light of our good will” (What it Means to be Christian, Ignatius, 2006).

The answer lies in the person of Jesus himself. The Messianic promise is fulfilled in the person of Jesus, who found peace in the midst of depravity and violence. The teachings of Jesus were complemented by the example of Jesus, who showed us through his life how to live in the world. It is in imitating Jesus and abandoning ourselves entirely to God that the Messianic promise comes true in our own lives. The promises of the Messianic prophecies and the description of the end times are simultaneous messages that we must appropriate in our own lives and in our own times. That promise is for us now, not just back then, and the warnings about the end times are for us now and not just back then.

Today’s second reading brings to light what should be the attitude of the Christian who lives in expectation: “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you, so as to strengthen our hearts, to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ…as you received from us how you should conduct yourselves to please God – you do so even more.”

Let our prayer for this Advent be that of St. Ambrose: “Of what use it is to me, who am mindful of my sins, if you come, O Lord, and yet do not come into my soul and into my spirit; if you, O Christ, do not live in me, nor speak within me? It is to me that you must come, for me that your coming advent must become a reality. Your second coming, O Lord, will take place at the end of the world; then we shall be able to say: For me the world has been crucified and I for the world. O see to it, Lord, that the end of the world finds me occupied with heaven. Then, wisdom, virtue, and justice, and the redemption will all become truly present for me. O Christ, you indeed died but once for the sins of your people, but with the purpose of ransoming them every day from their sins” (St. Ambrose, Commentary on the Gospel of Luke, 10: 7-8).

Jude Huntz is Director of the Human Rights Office for the Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph.

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