The Church year ends today with a vision of the end of time. The scene in the Gospel is stark and resounds with Old Testament echoes.
The Son of Man is enthroned over all nations and peoples of every language (see Daniel 7:13–14). The nations have been gathered to see His glory and receive His judgment (see Isaiah 66:18; Zephaniah 3:8). The King is the divine shepherd Ezekiel foresees in today’s First Reading, judging as a shepherd separates sheep from goats.
Each of us will be judged upon our performance of the simple works of mercy we hear in the Gospel today.
These works, as Jesus explains today, are reflections or measures of our love for Him, our faithfulness to His commandment that we love God with all our might and our neighbor as ourselves (see Matthew 22:36–40).
Our faith is dead, lifeless, unless it is expressed in works of love (see James 2:20; Galatians 5:6). And we cannot say we truly love God, whom we cannot see, if we don’t love our neighbor, whom we can (see 1 John 4:20).
The Lord is our shepherd, as we sing in today’s Psalm. And we are to follow His lead, to imitate His example (see 1 Peter 2:21; Ephesians 5:1).
He healed our sickness (see Luke 6:19), freed us from the prison of sin and death (see Romans 8:2, 21), welcomed us who were once strangers to His covenant (see Ephesians 2:12, 19). He clothed us in Baptism (see Revelation 3:5; 2 Corinthians 5:3–4), and feeds us with the food and drink of His own Body and Blood.
At “the end,” He will come again to hand over His kingdom to His Father, as Paul says in today’s Epistle.
Let us strive to be following Him in right paths, that this kingdom might be our inheritance, that we might enter into the eternal rest promised for the people of God (see Hebrews 4:1, 9–11).
No wrongful deed goes unpunished! Why then live in guilt and shame till our souls are darkened, our hearts turn to stone and our bodies decay through the sins that evade it? Repent while you still can and turn to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, for He can turn the darkness of sin and death into the light of His resurrection. Die to your sins and rise in Him!
With grace filled lives we can then truly celebrate the glory of our Risen Lord, Christ our King!
Very soon we will begin a new liturgical season of Advent, let us therefore prepare our hearts to receive Him anew this Christmas. Stay awake!
Lord Jesus I repent of all my sins, I stand in faith that You love me and want all that is good for me. I forgive everyone their sinned against me as I plead for Your mercy upon my sins; all that I have done and failed to do. I renounce the works of my enemies and ask You to Bless me. So that I may stand in Your authority Jesus to minister to my brethren. Amen
Saint Catherine of Alexandria pray for us…
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First reading
1 Maccabees 6:1-13 ·
‘I remember the wrong I did in Jerusalem’
King Antiochus was making his way across the upper provinces; he had heard that in Persia there was a city called Elymais, renowned for its riches, its silver and gold, and its very wealthy temple containing golden armour, breastplates and weapons, left there by Alexander son of Philip, the king of Macedon, the first to reign over the Greeks. He therefore went and attempted to take the city and pillage it, but without success, since the citizens learnt of his intention, and offered him a stiff resistance, whereupon he turned about and retreated, disconsolate, in the direction of Babylon. But while he was still in Persia news reached him that the armies that had invaded the land of Judah had been defeated, and that Lysias in particular had advanced in massive strength, only to be forced to turn and flee before the Jews; these had been strengthened by the acquisition of arms, supplies and abundant spoils from the armies they had cut to pieces; they had overthrown the abomination he had erected over the altar in Jerusalem, and had encircled the sanctuary with high walls as in the past, and had fortified Bethzur, one of his cities. When the king heard this news he was amazed and profoundly shaken; he threw himself on his bed and fell into a lethargy from acute disappointment, because things had not turned out for him as he had planned. And there he remained for many days, subject to deep and recurrent fits of melancholy, until he understood that he was dying. Then summoning all his Friends, he said to them, ‘Sleep evades my eyes, and my heart is cowed by anxiety. I have been asking myself how I could have come to such a pitch of distress, so great a flood as that which now engulfs me – I who was so generous and well-loved in my heyday. But now I remember the wrong I did in Jerusalem when I seized all the vessels of silver and gold there, and ordered the extermination of the inhabitants of Judah for no reason at all. This, I am convinced, is why these misfortunes have overtaken me, and why I am dying of melancholy in a foreign land.’
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Gospel
Luke 20:27-40
In God all men are alive
Some Sadducees – those who say that there is no resurrection – approached Jesus and they put this question to him, ‘Master, we have it from Moses in writing, that if a man’s married brother dies childless, the man must marry the widow to raise up children for his brother. Well then, there were seven brothers. The first, having married a wife, died childless. The second and then the third married the widow. And the same with all seven, they died leaving no children. Finally the woman herself died. Now, at the resurrection, to which of them will she be wife since she had been married to all seven?’
Jesus replied, ‘The children of this world take wives and husbands, but those who are judged worthy of a place in the other world and in the resurrection from the dead do not marry because they can no longer die, for they are the same as the angels, and being children of the resurrection they are sons of God. And Moses himself implies that the dead rise again, in the passage about the bush where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is God, not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all men are in fact alive.’
Some scribes then spoke up. ‘Well put, Master’ they said – because they would not dare to ask him any more questions.
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