Our Days are Numbered: Getting Ready for Eternity

Introduction

Parousia

A little-noticed word shows up in the Gospels toward the end of the liturgical year. In the final Sundays before Advent, the Church directs our piety with a repeated insistence on the expectation of the Parousia. This Greek word means presence and arrival, with specific reference to the Second Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who will return to judge the living and the dead, and begin the glorious phase of the kingdom of God. The first Christian generation awaited the Lord’s return as if it were a forthcoming event. These first followers liked to repeat a brief declaration that expressed their fervent desires: Maran-atha, or Come, O Lord!

Christians long believed that the Parousia would take place at an unknown date, which could still be a long way off. Yet they considered it their duty to prepare themselves and the world for Christ’s Second Coming. Traces of this fixation on the Second Coming appear in many Masses, but it is undoubtably the main theme of the final weeks of the liturgical year. If the Parousia and the hope of the Lord’s Last Coming holds such a place in the liturgy, it is primarily in answer to the Savior’s express command: Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour (Mt 25:13).

The Triumph of Jesus Christ

Today, too many Christians have all but forgotten the need to prepare for Christ’s return. They have narrowed their horizons to concern themselves only with their individual salvation, over which most feel a sense of dread. Yet our predecessors in the faith rejoiced above all at the thought of their meeting with the Lord, in which they imagined the dazzling triumph of Jesus Christ.

When Christians take Christ’s return seriously, this thought provokes an uncompromising purity of conscience, a stronger faith, and a sustained effort to conquer the world for him when he returns. Their spirits are held in breathless anticipation of this new world. Jesus’s resurrection has laid its foundations, and it will finish its construction in the general resurrection. Seen in this way, the hour when each of us bids farewell to this earth is stripped of the sadness that clouds our earthly sojourn. On the contrary, we look forward to death as the dawn of the Parousia. As soon as our hope is habitually turned toward the triumphant Coming of Jesus Christ, we prepare at the same time for the world’s salvation and our own.

1

Meeting the Lord: The Second Coming

That you may be blameless on the day of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

—1 Corinthians 1:8

St. Paul summarizes in the above words why believers must prepare for the Second Coming. They took him literally. The first disciples lived in the constant hope that the ascended Lord would soon return to found the new world that would be the definitive kingdom of God. His return would presumably take place at midnight (Mt 25:6) preceding the first day of the week. On this sacred day Jesus rose from the dead, and the Holy Spirit was poured out on his Church.

Was it not necessary, following the recommendation of the parable (Lk 12:35), that at the hour of return, he should find them gathered (this is the meaning of the word ecclesia), waiting for him, ready to follow him? Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes (Lk 12:37).

This hope inspired the first organization of Christian worship. Every Saturday evening, when the sabbatical rest was over, the faithful would gather for a prayer vigil, during which they prepared for the long-awaited day of the Parousia, the Day of the Lord. At vigil’s end, they renewed the Lord’s Supper, which is both a memorial and an anticipation. Every time Christians renew this meal, as St. Paul writes, they proclaim the Lord’s death (memorial) until he comes (expectation) (1 Cor 11:26). The Eucharist links Jesus’s redemptive sacrifice to his return. The Savior’s sacrifice was completed by his resurrection, and the present-day Mass is the pledge of the Christian’s own resurrection: It helps them await Christ’s return. This doctrine has not changed. Even today, our Mass is like a veiled Parousia, and our Sunday is still the Lord’s Day, dies dominica, the day when we gather to remember the Lord Jesus and await his return.

The Savior will judge the world on the day when he manifests himself in his glory. The expression Day of the Lord thus becomes synonymous with judgment in St. Paul’s language, to the point that he sometimes uses the word day to designate a human tribunal.¹ The Second Coming, however, brings with it the judgment of judgments, far more consequential than any earthly condemnation.

The Apostle therefore reminded his first converts that when they appear before the Lord’s tribunal no serious accusation should weigh upon them: that you may be blameless on the day of Our Lord (1 Cor 1:8). To be fully exonerated, serious work remains. Paul not only praises but also chastises the young Church at Corinth. Let them not lose heart, however, for Christians have received all the necessary help from God. The Lord Jesus himself will strengthen us, so that at life’s end we will not incur his condemnation.

St. Paul also warns us against presumption and despair. If we have the courage to purify ourselves now, it will spare us terror on the last day. Certainly, when we think that our eternity depends on the moment when we meet the Lord, we cannot but feel a sense of dread at first. We repeat with the psalmist: If thou, O Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? (Ps 130:3).

Troubled by the memory of sins, we are no less apprehensive of our countless infidelities to grace. Our good Master expected a holiness from us that would have extended his reign over the earth. What negligent servants we will have been—reluctant to do our work, botching our work, always thinking that we have done enough for him! Lastly, and this confounds us to no end, we will never be able to fittingly atone for our faults or make up for the lost time and graces rejected.

Fortunately, the Apostle draws us away from discouragement by turning us from an exclusive consideration of ourselves: Consequently he is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them (Heb 7:25). Tomorrow he will be our judge. Today he is our advocate with the Father. He is still our Savior.

The faults that will earn us the judge’s punishment later, he now brings before us with all the affection of an elder brother. Come to me, he says, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Mt 11:28). We have no friend dearer, more helpful, or more powerful than Christ who will judge us.

1. See 1 Corinthians 4:3 in Biblia Sacra Vulgata: Mihi autem pro minimo est ut a vobis judicer, aut ab humano die: sed neque meipsum judico.

2

Forgiveness of Sins: The Paralytic of Capernaum

Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.

—Matthew 9:2

In the early days of Jesus’s preaching, the Pharisees had not yet openly declared their hostility to Jesus and his fame was attracting enthusiastic crowds. His house in Capernaum had been invaded by visitors: There was no longer room for them, not even about the door (Mk 2:2).

A paralytic was carried by four men from his bed, but they were unable to make their way through the crowd blocking the entrance to the house. They quickly made a decision. They climbed the outside staircase leading to the terrace that served as a roof. The roofs of Galilean houses were made of wooden crossbeams supporting reed wainscot covered with clay or packed earth. It was easy for the porters to lift the layer of earth and push aside the reeds. Then, through the opening, they let down the paralytic to Jesus.

Imagine the crowd’s astonishment inside the house as they saw the cripple descend in a cloud of dust and stones. But what moves Jesus is the tenacious confidence of the paralytic’s friends, who have not shied away from any difficulty to help him. And when he saw their faith he said to the cripple, ‘Man, your sins are forgiven you’ (Lk 5:20).

Going Beyond Illusions

At first sight, the Savior’s declaration must have seemed irrelevant. It wasn’t what the little group had expected. They had gone to all this trouble for the miracle worker to heal the paralytic. But Jesus didn’t seem to pay any attention to the sick man’s inert limbs. He looks beyond the infirmities of the body and asserts that there is a more serious evil than physical pain: sin.

The unfortunate man was likely confused about the connection between his infirmity and his sins. A common view among the Savior’s contemporaries was that sickness was the punishment for personal or hereditary sins (Jn 9:2). Perhaps he feared that his past faults had made his illness incurable. This would explain the expression that St. Matthew puts on Jesus’s lips: Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven (Mt 9:2). In any case, the Lord was eager to convince those he was instructing that sin is the greatest of evils.

We have difficulty hearing this language. Often, we claim the right to choose the conditions of our own happiness, what is right and what is wrong. But this claim to decide good and evil as we please is a usurpation of God’s plan. We are part of a universe whose harmony is governed by the laws of the Creator. Human life on earth can only be sustained if it respects the conditions established by the author of life. To go against God’s plan is to raise our will above his. We introduce disorder into the world and