Tuesday of the
Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time
(I Thessalonians 5:1-6.9-11; Luke 4:31-37)
Every once in a while the work of Nostradamus, a
sixteenth century French writer, is dusted off to make a prediction of the end
of the world. The supposed seer wrote a
thousand verses of poetry that are interpreted, most always after the fact, to
have accurately predicted the future. But little if any of his work can be read
as precisely saying what or when future events will occur. In the first reading today St. Paul tells his
readers to dismiss foretelling such as Nostradamus’s of the imminent end of the
world.
Paul echoes Jesus in saying that the end will come like a
“thief at night.” His readers are to
stand ready at all times to greet the Lord when he arrives to claim his
own. Paul evidently believes that the
end will come sooner rather than later, but this is not his point. Rather, he wants the Thessalonians to not make
special preparation for that end. They are
to stand for the end semper fi by
living as “children of the light.” This
means that he wants the Thessalonians to be a showcase of charity and peace.
We do not know when the world will end. There is a prediction now that a meteor is
closing in on the earth and will cause its demise. Scientists say that in a few hundred millions
of years the sun will run out of fuel, expand, and engulf the earth in
flames. There are other, more tragic
scenarios. Humans have the capacity to
end life on earth with nuclear weapons.
We are wise to stay prepared as Paul tells us. There is no need to live in perpetual fear,
but there is real reason to practice charity and peace.
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