“Learn a lesson from the fig tree. When its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves, you know that Summer is near. In the same way, when you see these things happening, know that the Son of Man is near…Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Mark 13: 24-3
For thousands of years, there have been people among us who, after reflecting on how those around them have lived out their life spans and and died, have concluded that the earth on which those life spans have been lived out will also one day come to an end. In guessing at when that end might come and what it might look like, some have launched into committing to writing the results of their imagining. What they have written is categorised as apocalyptic literature. Over time, the word apocalyptic has come to refer to events that are dramatic, terrifying and spectacular. There is something about us that wants to know what the end times will look like in the expectation that knowing will allay our anxiety. Today’s first reading from the Book of Daniel belongs to the category of apocalyptic literature and part of the gospel-reading from Mark is apocalyptic in style and content. In more recent times movie producers have ventured into offering graphically disturbing visual impressions of the end times with films like Apocalypse Now.
Over time, we have excessively dramatized the meaning of the word apocalypse and its relatives such as apocrypha and apocalyptic. A good dictionary of the origin of English words (Dictionary of Etymology) will tell us that apocalypse came into English from Greek via Latin and Anglo-French, and that its literal meaning is to lift the cover off. For that reason, the last book of the New Testament is labelled as the Apocalypse or the Book of Revelation.
Those of us in the second half of our lives have all had excursions into the apocalyptic world. At a time when Masses for the Dead were celebrated in Latin and then in English, we were invited, often without realising it, into a meditation on the last days of the world and the Final Judgement. The Sequence of that Mass (the Dies Irae), recited generally before the Gospel, began with the lines: “That day of wrath, that dreadful day when heaven and earth shall pass away, both David and the Sibyl say. What terror then shall us befall, when lo, the Judge’s steps appal, about to sift the deeds of all.” That is part of a much longer poem attributed to Thomas of Celano, a late 13th Century Franciscan Friar and first biographer of St Francis of Assisi. Other ventures into the apocalyptic world are to be found in Dante’s Inferno, only a part of his Divine Comedy which is an allegory of a soul’s journey through hell to God. Dante depicted himself being led through that terrifying journey by the Roman poet Virgil. It was written back in 14th Century Italy. Michelangelo’s extraordinary depiction of the Last Judgement is an artistic expression of the apocalyptic and has been magnificently preserved on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. It was commissioned by Pope Clement VII in the late 1530s and completed four years later under his successor Pope Pius III in 1541. The remarkable aspect of all these works is that they miss the point that the last days, when the world comes tumbling down, will witness God coming in love and hope, witnessing to the boundless affection God has for humanity.
To grasp the paradox beneath all this and, indeed, the message proclaimed by Jesus in today’s gospel-reading, we may have to walk the narrow line between despair and hope. Hope is the virtue we seem to understand least and there is no sense in going in search of despair. Near-despair experiences come our way in the tragic events that touch all of us in the course of our lives. And it’s only in retrospect that we can bring ourselves to reflect on them. Near-despair experiences thrust themselves upon us. Our current world is teeming with near-despair experiences visited on our sisters and brothers in the conflicts currently raging in places like the Middle East, the Ukraine and the Sudan. Empathy with our sisters and brothers in those places might give us passing experiences of near-despair and hopelessness. It might seem that these people are living on the edge of total annihilation, with no reason to hope. The Dominican priest Gustavo Gutierrez, a man recognised as the founder of liberation theology, spoke eloquently and often of the virtue of hope. In one of his interviews, he calls us to live with hope firmly rooted in our hearts and went on to say:
“Hope is not the same thing as optimism. Optimism merely reflects the desire that external circumstances may one day improve. There is nothing wrong with optimism, but we may not always have reasons for it. The theological virtue of hope is much more than optimism. Hope is based on the conviction that God is at work in our lives and in our world. Hope is ultimately a gift from God given to sustain us during difficult times. Charles Péguy described hope as the “little sister” that walks between the “taller sisters” of faith and charity; when the taller sisters grow tired, the little one instills new life and energy into the other two. Hope never allows our faith to grow weak or our love to falter.”
People have long speculated about the end times and what they refer to as the last judgement. I suggest that Jesus launched into that topic to inspire them to hope in the boundless love of God that was evident in his way of living. Jesus was convinced that God was present in his life and in the world in which he lived and met with ceaseless opposition. His firm hope was that God could bring good out of any situation that confronted him. Jesus was brutally tortured and executed. Yet the message he proclaimed has spread to the ends of the world. And God vindicated him. In today’s gospel-reading, Jesus refers to himself as the “Son of Man, coming on the clouds with great power and glory”. In the Scriptures, “the Son of Man” is referred to as the epitome of love. Jesus informs his close followers that they, too, will meet with opposition and persecution, but that they, too, will recognise that God is present in them, in their lives and in their work. To hold that hope in God as firmly as he did is his invitation to them and to us in today’s gospel-reading. And that is what we try to do. We do it imperfectly, but still with purpose and decency. And that is what is at the heart of discipleship, isn’t it? Fear can imprison us like nothing else!
