Reading I
The days are coming, says the LORD,
when I will fulfill the promise
I made to the house of Israel and Judah.
In those days, in that time,
I will raise up for David a just shoot ;
he shall do what is right and just in the land.
In those days Judah shall be safe
and Jerusalem shall dwell secure;
this is what they shall call her:
“The LORD our justice.”
Responsorial Psalm
R. (1b) To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.
Your ways, O LORD, make known to me;
teach me your paths,
Guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my savior,
and for you I wait all the day.
R. To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.
Good and upright is the LORD;
thus he shows sinners the way.
He guides the humble to justice,
and teaches the humble his way.
R. To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.
All the paths of the LORD are kindness and constancy
toward those who keep his covenant and his decrees.
The friendship of the LORD is with those who fear him,
and his covenant, for their instruction.
R. To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.
Reading II
Brothers and sisters:
May the Lord make you increase and abound in love
for one another and for all,
just as we have for you,
so as to strengthen your hearts,
to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father
at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones. Amen.
Finally, brothers and sisters,
we earnestly ask and exhort you in the Lord Jesus that,
as you received from us
how you should conduct yourselves to please God
and as you are conducting yourselves
you do so even more.
For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
Gospel
Jesus said to his disciples:
“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars,
and on earth nations will be in dismay,
perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves.
People will die of fright
in anticipation of what is coming upon the world,
for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
And then they will see the Son of Man
coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
But when these signs begin to happen,
stand erect and raise your heads
because your redemption is at hand.
“Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy
from carousing and drunkenness
and the anxieties of daily life,
and that day catch you by surprise like a trap.
For that day will assault everyone
who lives on the face of the earth.
Be vigilant at all times
and pray that you have the strength
to escape the tribulations that are imminent
and to stand before the Son of Man.”
"In my end is my beginning."
"In my end is my beginning T S Elliot writes in [i] [/i], reflecting that for all the endings we experience the final end is not yet.
There is in fact no final end. Even when our city and our nation are destroyed as thoroughly as the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, or our town as fiercely as a bushfire reduces homes to heaps of ash and twisted roofing iron, life will go on in this sequence of time. Until ultimately in a final moment all things will be brought to their fullness in the Christ - in the Anointing of God.
Lying awake in the early hours recently I slipped into deep anxiety. Achievements I've been proud of came before me with all the flaws exposed, the flaws I had introduced or accommodated and promoted. Nothing has been good in my life, not really good. Is it so for everyone?
In starting a new year with reflection on the end of the old are we not saying that change and renewal are of the essence of things. We've shared a lot lately on renewal and the truism that without change we are dead. And here it is built into the fabric of the Church's liturgical praying. I wonder what those who hold to an unchanging and unchangeable tradition make of this?
I imagine the gospel writers were giving a nod to the idea that the catastrophe of AD 70 saw the end of the Jewish nation and the 'old dispensation', allowing Christians to think of themselves as the new chosen people. From this developed ideas of exclusivity, of preferment, which eventually found expression in the gob-smacking axiom: [i]'Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus'[/i] - Outside the Church No Salvation. The balance to be maintained here is as delicate as those first sensitive shoots pushing through the ashes after fire. Best not be dogmatic about who is saved and who is lost, but make every round a new start towards a new phase to be achieved.
They say old people become childish; no doubt some do, but perhaps more oldies, long past the phase of relief to be leaving it behind, find themselves reviewing their childhood under a different light. Causation is recognised, to account for traits both prized and not. The parents who passed on some elements and not others; the siblings forming the environment that determined early development, themselves result of genetic chance; the times, the place, the social standing or lack thereof. Much becomes forgiveable when better understood. Some are even correctable when their origin is known.
So it is too with the People of God. I find it is not necessary to have studied every angle and know the whole history of those first centuries. Enough to recognise some pointers and to compare the growth and ageing of that first generation with our own experience over three, four, five or six decades. Our growing understanding expresses old values in new ways, old truths with better grasp of their meaning, old hopes and fears within a more real context.