A few years ago, at the end of November, I saw a high profile Catholic leader “apologize” on social media for the fact that the Scripture readings for the last week of Ordinary Time focused too much on the end of the world and its catastrophes. (Are these readings really too alarmist for ‘progressive-minded’ people?)
On another occasion, I heard a priest, otherwise orthodox in his doctrine and a very good preacher, say that Jesus’ words in Mark 13 about the stars falling from the sky and the heavenly powers being shaken refer to the idols that must fall in our lives, since ancient peoples idolized the stars. On a similar vein, I also repeatedly hear of other church leaders interpreting everything that Jesus says about his coming and the need to be prepared as referring to the moment when each of us is called by God at our death.
It is certainly wise for us to understand the importance of being prepared for death, and of being in God’s grace for that definitive step; but what Jesus is talking about is not that, but rather his final coming as a universal event. The individualistic and subjectivist tendency of our time is too strong, and thus it refers everything to the individual, to what is going to happen to me and how I am going to experience it, while avoiding the “public and notorious” aspect of God’s direct and personal interventions in history.
(Among Spanish-speaking Catholics, this subjectivism is reflected, for example, in the traditional version of the Lord’s Prayer, when it says “thy Kingdom come to us.” The phrase “to us” is not in the Greek text of the Gospel, and not even in the form of this prayer in Latin. What Jesus teaches us to say is only “thy Kingdom come,” and it is because what he wants us to long for is the final, universal and objective coming of the Kingdom of God, and not simply a subjective experience of that reality.)
It is all very well to examine our lives to see if there are any false gods in them that we must put aside and that must be defeated and, in that sense, “fall.” But that is not what Jesus is talking about in his eschatological discourse (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21). Here Jesus is speaking, beyond all doubt, of cosmic events in which God’s lordship, his judgment on humanity and the definitive establishment of his eternal Kingdom will be manifested.
The priest’s homily on falling idols, as well as the references of so many other clergy to our own death as the “coming” of the Lord for which we must prepare, have elements of truth and call our attention to something that is important for our Christian life. But both of these two examples and that of the high profile church leader who uses social media to apologizes are ways (perhaps elegant ways) in which many Christian leaders today (and especially, it seems to me, some clergy) are evading the subject of the end of the world and the things that Jesus announces for that final event. It seems that they feel the duty to explain Jesus’ warnings in such a way that they actually empty them of their content or twist their meaning. They are afraid to talk about the area and to take it in its direct literal sense, probably because it clashes with the modern – allegedly “scientific” – mentality in which there is no room for things like divine signs in the moon and in the sun, cosmic disturbances and apparently fabulous predictions like the personal coming of Jesus Christ.
The modern and postmodern mentality, which many Christians seem to want to please in the end, indicates that God, if he exists, does not intervene personally in history; that the world will never end, unless we manage climate change very badly or we are hit by the bad luck of a large meteorite that destroys our planet; and that humanity will continue to advance and progress indefinitely, both technologically and socially and in the other fields of civilization – this is the myth of progress, current in the West since the time of the Enlightenment… And in the face of all this, I don’t know why many good Christians, including many of my fellow Catholics, feel uncomfortable or even ashamed by certain words of Jesus and the apostles that sound too primitive, too naive, even folkloric or magical if you will…
In the times in which we live, no one wants to be labelled as a “fundamentalist.” Perhaps that is why some good Christians shy away from saying (or even believing) things with the clarity and simplicity with which Jesus said them. When Jesus, sometimes using expressions from the prophets, speaks of disturbances in nature (such as the sun darkening or the stars falling), he may not be saying that these things will literally happen; but he is saying that the very creation that surrounds us (geography, the atmosphere, and even the bodies we see in the sky) can become shaken, become unbalanced (at least in our eyes), and that this can be part of what God does to call humanity to conversion.
Are we not seeing, precisely in our times, how human actions can have serious consequences on the environment and on the entire planet? Have we not seen how air pollution can darken entire regions, how rivers and seas are polluted by industrial and commercial waste, and how nuclear power plant accidents cause major ecological and human disasters?
There are Christians, especially among those who claim to know a lot about theology or biblical criticism, who invoke the famous (and often misunderstood) question of “literary genres” to discredit the Word of God. They say, for example, that the aforementioned eschatological discourses of Jesus use figures and images of the “apocalyptic genre” that should not be taken literally. My experience tells me that many of those who resort so much to the literary genres argument have perhaps read some high-flying liberal-minded theologians, but they know very little about literature. In the parables, Jesus is indeed using a special literary genre (precisely that of the parable or, if you will, the fable).
When speaking of his final coming, he includes in his discourse the parable of the fig tree (see Matthew 24:32ff; Luke 21:29–31), but the rest of the discourse is neither apocalyptic nor parabolic; these are prophetic warnings and calls to perseverance and faith, and announcements of what his glorious coming will be like. And the greater part of the four Gospels (which could be said to constitute a literary genre in themselves, together with the Acts of the Apostles) are not an apocalyptic or figurative literary genre, but rather a testimonial narrative that, although it does not strictly conform to modern criteria of historiography, does relate historical facts in a style similar to that which might be found, for instance, in the written and oral testimonies of a judicial process. We can all see that in certain passages Jesus resorts to figures of speech or hyperbole, but that does not weaken the literalness of the central points that he wants to emphasize.
If we look, for example, at the eschatological discourse in Luke 21:5–36 (without delving into the fact that there seems to be a mixture of Jesus’ sayings about the destruction of Jerusalem with sayings about his second coming and the end of the world), we see that “terrors and great signs from heaven” (v. 11b; also v. 25) are indeed mentioned, without being defined, along with natural phenomena that we are familiar with (“earthquakes, famines, and pestilence,” v. 11a) and social upheavals (“nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom,” v. 10). There is nothing unbelievable or fabulous about this; these are all perfectly possible things, as history and our own experience show.
The main part of the discourse, however, is devoted to spiritual warnings: how not to be afraid of these calamities and disturbances, how to trust in God in the midst of persecution, how to face division and betrayal by those close to us, how not to be deceived by false prophets, how not to be weakened by worry or vices, and therefore, most importantly, how to be prepared for the final coming of Christ so that we can “stand before” him (v. 36).
“And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”
Luke 21:25-26
I am struck by Jesus’ words in Luke 21: There will be “on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves” (v. 25). He could be saying that people will be afraid of even something as normal as the roaring of the sea and the waves (and to be afraid of what is normal is a serious thing in itself!); but he could also be referring to an extraordinary “roaring and waves” of great proportions. I remember the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004, and the tragic tsunamis in subsequent years in Japan and Chile: did they not cause great “distress of nations,” especially since modern communications made the whole world aware of it instantly?
But, precisely in the immediate context of those words (vv. 25–28), when announcing the distress and terror of peoples who do not know God, we Christians are given the glad tidings that should mark our attitude:
“Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Luke 21:27–28
There is nothing to fear, nothing to shy away from, nothing to conceal: we want Jesus to come back, and to come back soon! We long for his glorious coming, which is our blessed hope! And those same things that terrify the people of the world should make us take courage and raise our heads, because they are the sign that what we long for is about to arrive.
This article © by Carlos Alonso Vargas is an adapted English translation of the original Spanish version, ¿Cuál es el problema de los católicos con el fin del mundo?. See more essays by Carlos Alonso Vargas (in Spanish) on his website blog at https://carlosalonsovargas.medium.com/
Top image credit: Photo of a violent storm with lightning flashes, by Johannes Plenio at Uplash.com. Free to use under the Unsplash License.
Carlos Alonso Vargas is a long-time leader in The Sword of the Spirit, who has served mainly in teaching and community building. With studies in philology and linguistics, he works as a translator and editor. He and his wife Dora have three adult children and five grandchildren and live in San José, Costa Rica.