What Happened to the Second Coming? - Fr. Richard Ounsworth, O. P.

it the creek we think that he will come again in glory to judge the dead and he probably noticed by now that that has not as yet happened which need not be a problem for us everything happens eventually except that it does appear in some passages in the estimate in the Gospels especially that not only the early Christians but Christ himself thought that the second coming was pretty imminent although in mark 13 and Matthew 24 Christ says no one knows the day or the hour there are other passages where it does very much sound as though Christ knows and is promising that it's coming soon and that has been central to the hope of the early Christians and the second coming remains central today to Christian Hope in mark chapter 9 Christ says there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of man come in power and in chapter 13 of the Saint gospel he tells us that this generation will not pass away until Christ has come in glory well how do we get around that problem you might say well it's perfectly straightforward we simply read the second letter of Peter in which the Apostle tells us that to God one day is as a thousand years I just realised in my notes it says the other way round one year is like a thousand days which is not so much of a dramatic difference is it one day is like a thousand years and so you know well there we are will that do many people think that it really won't they asked the question was Christ wrong when he made the promises he seems to have been making or was he lying or at least was he deliberately misleading his apostles in his book the quest of the historical Jesus Albert Schweitzer showed to my satisfaction and to that of many that Christ was an eschatological prophet he was more than that of course but he was at the very least a prophet an apocalyptic prophet one who spoke in apocalyptic terms and an eschatological apocalyptic prophet one who spoke about the coming of the end of the world and indeed that he was going to bring about that coming that there was something intimately related to him in discussion of the end of the world and that understanding of Christ as an eschatological prophet has been a principal crux of historical Jesus research ever since writes his work now we can reject that view we might take the view of the Jesus Seminar associated with people like Robert funk and John Dominic Crossan who argue that Jesus did start with that kind of understanding when he was a disciple of John the Baptist but then he moved away from it rejected apocalyptic eschatology alas though after his own death and the resurrection that the Jesus Seminar mostly doesn't believe in Christ's followers really conceived his teaching along the lines that Jesus himself had rejected the lines of their own Jewish background now I'm not going to attack the Jesus Seminar now Phung though it would be to do so because I'm going to assume if I may that my audience today believes the Gospels give us a fundamentally accurate picture of who Jesus was and what he says so we can't simply say to ourselves oh Jesus never said that so we needn't worry we might instead take a more nuanced and interesting line I think such as is exemplified by the English Anglican theologian Tom Wright the former bishop of Durham who argues that a great deal of the language in the New Testament which seems to be about the end of the world is really about socio-political upheavals we've been reading Jesus wrong Jesus did speak about this kind of thing but what he was really talking about was a radical change in the socio-political situation in the ancient world and when he spoke about his second coming what he was really talking about was how he himself would be enthroned at the right hand side of the Father and vindicated that vindication would be manifested by the fall of the temple that Christ predicted so when we hear the language of the Son of man coming in power that's not a coming down but a coming up Tom right I think probably does himself believe in the second coming he just doesn't think that that's what Jesus was talking about now alas at least alas for Tom that won't quite work let's take for example mark 8 verse 3 whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him will the Son of man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his father with the Holy Angels or again Matthew 24 the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will punish him and put him with the hypocrites their men will weep and gnash their teeth I think we have to agree with Origen Tom Wright might think that he's original but Origen tells us that many people had reduced all of the apocalyptic eschatological prophecy of Christ to discussion of the fall of the temple hundreds thousands of years ago Origen said of that manual asset which I like to translate as that would be a bit much it's also true that many New Testament scholars today find in Luke and John's Gospel which are later Gospels signs of what you might call an eschatological softening are playing down of those expectations which to me strongly suggests that initially those expectations were strong that whatever Christ had in fact said the earliest Christians did think that he had promised that he would come again and that he would come again soon and mainstream New Testament scholars today do indeed assert that Jesus Christ was an eschatological prophet he expected his imminent return the question then it do we think with somebody like Bart airman or Dale Allison that he was mistaken and we must simply make the best of it I don't think we can really do that not just because it's not consonant with Catholic teaching but also because if we decide for ourselves that one part of Christ's fundamental message was mistaken how can we know what else to take seriously in what else was he mistaken how can we assert his divine identity or the authority of his other teachings how can we be confident that we have been saved by the passion death of Christ I will be arguing for the rest of this lecture that Christ's eschatological prophecies and the fact that they are as yet unfulfilled is entirely consonant with Orthodox Christian belief in who Jesus was in what he said and consonant with the Orthodox Christian understanding - of who God is and how he operates Christ's prophecies of the eschaton are just the last in a long line of eschatological prophecies that we find in the Old Testament I want to talk for a little bit about one of those the prophecy of the restoration of the first temple after its destruction by the Babylonians Jeremiah tells us thus says the Lord when seventy years are completed for Babylon I will visit you and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place but considerably later in the Book of Daniel we read these words from the eponymous prophet while I was speaking and praying confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God for the holy hill of my god while I was speaking in prayer the man Gabriel who might seen in the vision at the first came to me in Swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice he came and he said to me Oh Daniel I have now come out to give you wisdom and understanding 70 weeks of years are decreed concerning your people and your holy city to anoint a most holy place so it's not going to be 78 it was never going to be 70 years it was going to be 490 years fair enough that's all right then well not really it sounds a bit like some kind of exegetical squirming you might think exactly the kind of exegetical squirming some people say that to Peter is doing and that Christians are just prone to do when what they expect doesn't quite turn out but this extension from 70 years to 490 years is by no mean arbitrary The Book of Leviticus tells us that when God has imposed some punishment and then the people do not respond appropriately to that punishment well then in spite of this if you will not hearken to me then I will chastise you again Sevenfold for since I will bring more plagues upon you Sevenfold as many as your sins so that multiplying by seven it's not something arbitrary in the Book of Daniel remember Daniel told us while he was speaking and praying confessing the sin of my people Israel so they've not responded to that initial punishment of a seventy exile and so appropriately the Exile is increased said oh well that's part of the story but there's more to it you see seventy years roughly after Jeremiah prophesied the people of Israel did indeed return to the land you can read about that in books of Ezra and Nehemiah which I'm sure are your bedside reading anyway and the rebuilding of the temple which took place and we can read about that in Haggai and Zechariah but when we read Haggai and Zechariah we get a very strong sense that although the temple was rebuilt it wasn't very good it was somewhat inadequate it was a partial fulfillment at best of the hopes for a new temple that the people of Israel had that's going to be important a little later on for now though I want to draw your attention to that idea that there's a relationship between when a prophecy is fulfilled or indeed whether it's fulfilled and how human beings respond to God's dealings with humanity you see there are two models if you will of prophecy and how it works the most natural model the model we sort of expect is that which is given to us in Deuteronomy chapter 18 this is where Moses is promising a prophet after himself that will come to prophesied of people of Israel and he says if you say in your art how may we know the word which the Lord has not spoken when a prophet speaks in the name the Lord if the word does not come to pass or come true that is a word which the Lord has not spoken the prophet has spoken it presumptuously you need not be afraid of him in other words it's perfectly straightforward to know whether or not a prophecy is genuine it comes true from God if it doesn't wasn't that leaves us with a problem when it comes to those prophecies of Christ which seem not to have come true but let's turn to Jeremiah again and chapter 18 he tells us this if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom but I will pluck up and break down and destroy it and if that nation in concerning which I've spoken turns from its evil I will repent of the evil that I intended to do to it and if at any time I declare concerning an apron or a kingdom that I will build and plant it and if it does evil in my sight not listening to my voice then I will repent of the good which I had intended to do to it so it might sometimes be the case that the point of a prophecy is not really to give you accurate calendrical information as to what's going to happen and when but rather to bring about some kind of repentance or to Kindle enthusiasm in the people of God a classic example of this of course is the prophet Jonah off he goes to Nineveh well eventually and he says yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown and then of course it isn't it's Jonah then a failure because his prophecy didn't come true or is he not rather a success because it didn't need to so we have two models of prophecy the Deuteronomy the Deuteronomic model in which a prophecy either comes true it doesn't and if it doesn't well it wasn't a prophecy and the more perhaps nuanced Jeremih anak model in which the purpose of prophecy is not so much Cronk lost occasion as activation do we have to choose between these two models I'm not sure that we do I'm not sure that we can be asked to choose between two passages in the scriptures there must be a way of holding them together after our book when the Son of man didn't come was published one of my brethren father Simon gain who some of you will know ready a tent made many criticism of his charity he is much more familiar than I am with the writings of Aquinas and he pointed out to me that Aquinas writes about two different ways in which God might reveal something to a prophet he might simply reveal to a prophet what is going to happen god knows what is going to happen of course he can simply show that to the Prophet or he might reveal as it were the causes of things he might reveal to the Prophet this is how things are at the moment this is where things are headed this is how things are going to be assuming that things don't change without necessarily revealing to the Prophet whether or not things are in fact going to change we in this respect operate rather like God quite a lot of the time if we have children for example which I don't we might say to them something like we're going to go it buy you shoes and then we'll get ice cream what I really mean and the child is supposed to understand that is then we'll get ice cream if you're good or I might say to my child who is playing with matches you'll set yourself on fire and end up in hospital what I really mean is I hope you don't set yourself on fire and it up in hospital but that's the way things are going sometimes of course in the scriptures a prophecy does simply come to pass even though its purpose was to bring about repentance I'm thinking here of the death of the child of Bathsheba despite David's repentance his fasting mourning and weeping the child does star but David does say there that what's a possibility surely that it might not have come to pass now of course I'm not suggesting for a minute that we are going to change God's mind not at all as I always say when we're talking about intercessory prayer it's not about us changing God's mind it's about God changing our minds and that's something that prophecy is for I remember when I started studying a prophetic books and the lecturers thought it was clever to say prophecy isn't so much about foretelling as about forth telling I prefer to say that it's really both of those things at once it is about say what is going to happen and it is about encouraging us whether it's encouraging us to repent so that we may may not fall into the dreadful punishments that are promised to those who do not repent or as is more importantly the case in today's topic about encouraging us to longed for and to act in such a way as to hasten that end whose day god alone knows but how are we to do that and how does prophecy encourage us to do that in order to understand that I think we have to speak about Ezra and Nehemiah again there was remember a building of a temple it wasn't a very good temple initially and it was built rather grudgingly if Haggai and Zechariah are to be believed but it was built and it kept the dream alive it perhaps wasn't the full fulfillment of what God had promised by the Prophet Jeremiah but that prophecy of Jeremiah had encouraged the people to build this temple and the building of this temple inadequate though it was in turn encouraged the people to hope for yet greater temple a yet greater fulfillment of the promises of God a fulfillment that you and I know came not in a building made by human hands but in the temple of his body in the person of Jesus Christ but that partial fulfillment functioned for the people of Israel as a sort of stepping stone it was something that was sat there in the river of human history and enabled them to continue to plow their way through the waters if you will in the hope of eventually making it to the other side something that sustained the people of Israel in their hope and it their journey other then stepping stones that we can point to to the second coming of Christ to the parousia well I've already quoted Christ saying there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the Son of Man come in power listen Thomas in his commentary on Matthew's Gospel does something tremendously modern actually something which we call now narrative criticism he says let's have a look at where this happens in the story and the very next thing that happens after Christ has made that promise is the Transfiguration some Thomas tells us that the Transfiguration is pointed to by the expression taste death he tells us and you can buy this or not as a piece of biblical exegesis as you prefer that sinners don't taste death but are swallowed up by it it's only saints who merely taste death before passing on so obviously there he was talking about the Saints who are standing around him Peter James and Gordon whom he then took up the mountain who saw him transfigured well whether or not I do think the Transfiguration functions as a stepping stone to the second coming not as is often suggested I think a stepping stone to the resurrection because the resurrection wasn't like the Transfiguration Jesus wasn't shining at the resurrection he was at the Transfiguration but my goodness me will he shine when he comes in glory that being said the resurrection and ascension also function as stepping stones to the second coming for example in Matthew 26 when Christ stands before the high priest we are told Jesus was silent and the high priest said to him I adjure you by the Living God tell us if you are the Christ the Son of God jesus said to him you have said that but I tell you from now on you will see son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven it is in a certain sense that we can see through the resurrection and ascension of Christ to his second coming in a similar way and I've already mentioned this jesus answered them after the cleansing of the temple destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up the Jews said it's taken 46 years to build this temple will you raise it up in three days but he spoke of the temple of his body when therefore he was raised from the dead the disciples remembered that he'd said this and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken the resurrection points forwards to the fulfillment of all the words that Christ had spoken as it strengthens our belief in the fundamental honesty the fundamental sincerity of all of his prophecies in mark chapter 13 there's a strong parallel between the words of Christ in his apocalyptic prophecies and the second chapter of the book of Joel and then that second chapter of Joel is picked up again in the Acts of the Apostles in Peter speak and Pentecost so perhaps Pentecost also functions as a sort of stepping stone and down payment of foretaste of the second coming as the Holy Spirit came in tongues of flame so Christ will come in glory to set us free look also at John chapter 14 he speaks first of all of the parousia in my father's house are many fruit if it were not so would I've told you that I go to prepare a place for you and when I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and will take you to myself that's clearly the second coming a little later on in the same chapter though he seems to be speaking of the resurrection yet a little what the world will see me no more but you will see me because I live you will live also and then finally Christ begins to speak about something else again the life of the church I think jesus answered him if a man who loves me he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him these things I've spoken to you while I am still with you but the counsel of the Holy Spirit whom the father will send in my name there's Pentecost again he will teach you all the things bring to remembrance all that I have said to you let not your hearts be troubled neither let them be afraid notice by the way that this is also thoroughly Trinitarian the Christian even now is incorporated into the life of the Trinity but that incorporation is itself a stepping stone to the second coming not only for us as Christians incorporated into the life of grace but for the whole world we Christians function as stepping pose I suppose we could also say that there are later historical events an obvious one to go for is the destruction of the temple was that also a stepping stone to the second coming does Tom right after all have a point even if not the whole point all of these things these stepping stones sustain our hope they make it possible for us to live towards the second coming to live an authentic Christian life now which makes possible that repentance which the promise of the second coming is attended to bring about that repentance which hastens the coming of the kingdom in the all-knowing Providence of God that idea of hastening the day it's consonant with the teachings of the New Testament and the Church Fathers let's go back to the second letter of Peter since all these things that it's to save the world are thus to be dissolved what sort of persons ought you to be it lives of holiness and godliness waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God because of which the heavens will be kindled and dissolved and the elements will with fire therefore beloved since you wait for these be zealous to be found by him without spot or blemish at at peace simple to in the second chapter of Romans do you suppose that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself you will escape the judgment of God or do you presume upon the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience do you not know the God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance to Peter as we know tells us that the delay of the procedure is an expression of God's patience in the writings of Cyprian of Carthage weary why with frequently repeated prayers do we entreat and beg that date of his kingdom may hasten if our greater desires and stronger wishes are in fact to obey the devil or the Shepherd of hermas go and speak to all people in order that they may repent and live to God being patient the Lord wants those who were called through his son to be saved now we should not consider this patience on the part of God to be the same thing as a lack of resolve Paul I mentioned already cannot be accused by any means of doubting the mastery of God in Christ over the whole of human history st. Paul's God is not a wavering God the God of Jesus Christ is not a wavering God I could mention more passages have a look for example of Acts 13 19 to 21 have a look at the book of Revelation which combines a strongly deterministic understanding of human history with this same notion of God's patience as is explained to the Saints under the altar asking how much longer must we wait so the purpose of prophecy then is to activate that repentance to give us that desire for the coming of the kingdom and to sustain us in hope so that we can desire and so that we can live lives that draw out as it were the second coming this idea of sustaining Hope which is back long before Christ it reaches back into the history of Israel I note with interest father Thomas Joseph will be speaking next time about typological readings of Israel's history it should be fascinating I'm not myself that typological reading is encoded especially in the Feast of the Old Testament those of Passover Tabernacles and Pentecost since John's Gospel shows us so clearly how Christ in his person and in ministry fulfills each of these types but the Christian liturgy too takes up the idea that the liturgy can commemorate the past as it also points forwards hope to the future the obvious example of that is in the Eucharist some paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10 I think in the Eucharist we proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes we look backwards and we look forwards the Christ who is present on the altar made present by words spoken 2000 years ago is the one who is to come and the Catechism of the Catholic Church we read the same thing by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life when God will be all in all there's a strong emphasis in the Catechism on the link between this pathological anticipation in the Eucharist and the way of which the Eucharist fulfills all of God's Old Testament promises for example it tells us by celebrating the Last Supper with his apostles in the course of the Passover meal Jesus gave the Jewish Passover its definitive meaning he fulfills the Jewish Passover and anticipates the final Passover of the church in the glory of the kingdom and just today I was reading the second preface of the Eucharist in the Roman Missal which goes like this at the Last Supper with his apostles establishing for the ages to come the saving memorial of the cross he offered himself to you as the unblemished lamb the acceptable gift of perfect praise nourishing your faithful by this sacred mystery you make them holy so that the human race bounded by one world maybe enlightened by on faith and united by one bond of charity so we approach the table of this wondrous sacrament so that bathed in the sweetness of your grace we may pass over to the heavenly reality here foreshadowed the liturgy points us forwards precisely by pointing us back and it points us forwards precisely by pointing us upwards in the liturgy our attention is drawn to the heavenly realities that are signified and made present and in the Jewish apocalyptic imagination up is forwards and forwards is up the future our future is laid up for us already in heaven an ascent Paul tells us it is to heaven that we look for a Savior Jesus Christ who will come again in glory from heaven to earth so in the liturgy as we look up to see Christ coming towards us we are remembering and hastening the future that's exactly why we pray what we pray when we pray the Our Father and so it is that at least Italian Christians have linked together the two petitions of the our Father thy kingdom come and thy will be done it's not that we will change God's mind about the date of the second coming but rather that God has always known of course he has the day of his coming and he has always known how we will respond to that promise to that invitation and he has always in His infinite Providence willed that we will hasten the day by that life of repentance by that ethical eschatology eschatology and eschatological ethic which should characterize or Christian life let me finish by taking us back to Jonah Jonah the failed or possibly successful prophet who said yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown and then it wasn't because the people repented or did they the people of Nineveh immediately threw on sackcloth and ashes not only onto themselves but onto their cattle - even their cattle had to engage in a repentant first it's a little bit over the top it's a little bit you might say shallow and perhaps that explains why it was that Jonah having been told by God well your jobs done you can go home I'm paraphrasing instead went and sat outside the city to see what would happen because consciously or unconsciously Jonah knew this was not the end of the story if God makes a promise that promise will come true it may not come true in the way we expect it may not come true exactly at the time we expect but it will come true so Joe never sat and watched and waited and they grew up over him to protect him from the evil of the Sun a plant a kicker young whatever that is the medieval thought it was a massive cucumber and it overshadows him and it protects him and he's pleased and during the night of evil eats away at the roots of the massive cucumber and it falls and it withers and he is once again exposed to the evil of the Sun and in the same way the inauthentic shallow trivial facile repentance of the people of Nineveh that too will fail that too will with her and once again they will be exposed and it wasn't that long after the ministry of Jonah before the city of Nineveh was indeed destroyed but in the meantime in what happened to him as he was exposed to the powerful heat of the Sun he became a sort of stepping stone in a in a bad way for the people of Nineveh our task as Christians is not just to tread merrily along the river of human history across all of those stepping stones but ourselves by the way in which we live our lives by the way in which we manifestly long for the second coming of Christ in which we pray for it in which we live out eschatological ethics we become stepping stones for the world so that the whole world might finally cross the river and it thank you all right father thank you so much that was wonderful we're really grateful to have you with us today and we do have time for some questions so people on YouTube have been streaming questions and it looks like there's a very interesting conversation going on our first question in fact comes to us live one of our zoom viewers has a question for you so let's see this questioning comes from Matthew on zoom so Matthew please go ahead about the second coming from the biblical ones because well it's about something more apocalyptic oh I see the church is a very cautious position so how can we best best move that that's a good question thank you as you say the church is very cautious about these things and that shows the great wisdom of the church it is of course perfectly possible that God has indeed genuinely and authentically revealed to some particular human being the date of the second coming it seems to me that that's not the right thing for us to know it might be the right thing for a particular individual to know but it seems to me that the whole point of these prophecies the whole point of the promise of the second coming of Christ is that it should make a difference to the way in which we live our lives and it's not going to make the right sort of difference if we ate it would make a difference goodness meat would make it if we knew it was going to be tomorrow we'd all I suppose start to look terribly busy right but that's not the point the point is to live lives which look forward in hope and as we read the New Testament I think it's important hope which is seen is not hope a private revelation is a vision it's something seen but what we do is we hope all right great thank you so our next question I'm going to read because it's coming from one of our viewers on YouTube Ireland on YouTube asks there has been a huge resurgence among theologians of the idea that everyone will be saved who will be saved in the second coming and what is the official teaching of the Catholic Church on this topic good well I don't have the list unfortunately if I did that would be very interesting but that would also be a private revelation and I have never had one so whom will be I've no idea I'm me I hope and you I hope but other than that who can say well God I suppose what is the official teaching the official teaching is that we should hope for every particular individual we should hope that that individual will be saved whomever it may be however wicked they may appear to have been in this life we should hope that they will be saved that they will have been able to accept the offer of salvation to make the act of repentance necessary to accept this offer but we also have to believe that it is possible not to that human beings are free just as we see that people many many people don't hope for the second coming so it must be possible that there will be people who when the second coming happens and when they see Christ come it glory their reaction will not be as I hope mine and yours will be one of joy delight excitement at what's going to happen next but rather of fear horror disgust contempt hatred anger all of those responses are possible to Christ and all of those responses are possible to the second coming of Christ and in the meantime I suppose we would have to say all of those responses are possible when somebody does ease and they make that final decision it is possible to go to hell hell is a real possibility it's interesting that those same theologians who like to discount the possibility of hell they'll very often tell us oh you know helps very much an Old Testament idea Jesus isn't about that Jesus is about being nice well all I would say is this there is no hell in the Old Testament if you want to find hell in the Bible you have to look in the New Testament and in particular you have to look at the teaching of Christ he the one who speaks of weeping and gnashing of teeth maybe he was just trying to frighten us but I don't think that's the kind of faint Jesus did I think he was born of a very austere but in the hope not just for myself and God but Thank You father well hopefully that is a warning that's you know we all take to hearts I'm I'm an endeavoring to do so based on what you said so another question we had come in from youtube is from Victoria she asks could you please elaborate on the connection between Jesus's preaching concerning the kingdom of God and his second coming at the end of the end of time okay yes I suppose I can a bit the the kingdom of God that Christ preached has if you like a double leaning on the one hand he is speaking about the kingdom of heaven the final confirmation of all things the manifest reality of the reign of God in heaven and on earth which is that which Christ will bring about when he comes again in glory but he's also speaking about the fact that even now God reigns even now God is in fact king and the kingdom of God that Christ preached which was breaking in even in his ministry which was manifested by the person of Christ in his forgiveness of sins in his casting out of demons in his healing and so on and most made manifest of course by his death and resurrection that is an acknowledgment in the human heart and in human society of that ultimate objective reality that God is king and so even in this life we have as it were a sacrament of the kingdom that's what some theologians have called the church in fact a sacrament of the kingdom we Christians must be efficacious signs of that already and not yet reality of God's reign God's reign which will be consummated which will be made manifest but which should be manifest but now at least in my heart and my life and your heart and your life and in the life of the church all right thank you so father you have a couple of times now referenced the virtue of hope as we're thinking about these things I'm wondering if you could just very quickly elaborate a little bit more on what that virtue actually is because I think there's a lot of misunderstanding today and confusion about what hope really is sure I now wish I had looked up some Thomas's definition of Hope before I started speaking but I haven't and none of my three brethren here is rushing towards me with a copy of the summer so we will just have to manage without some Thomas's formal definition I think the first thing to say is that we should distinguish between the virtue of hope and a bolide cheerful optimism hope doesn't mean thinking that everything's basically going to be fine and that's the one thing it doesn't mean everything is going to be not basically fine everything's going to be absolutely fantastic and amazing because everything is going to be the vision of God everything is going to be the kingdom of God but in the meantime we acknowledge the reality of pain and sorrow of horror of anguish we acknowledge the possibility the reality of our own sinfulness of our own wickedness we acknowledge the great difficulties that people are finding but we live lives which are directed towards the future we live lives which only make sense in the light of the second coming lives which are fundamentally if you will eschatologically oriented and to live that kind of life is to live a life of hope is to manifest the virtue of hope it's not applies optimism but it is absurd confidence not just in God per se which is faith but absolute confidence that God will fulfill his promises and alongside that confidence the determination which becomes possible by grace to live lives which hasten those promises which make sense of those promises and which actually make sense only in the light of those promises alright great thank you that was very helpful our next question also comes from one of our viewers on YouTube they asked where are the Saints today because of old they levitated they by located they could read souls is this something that will happen again at the Second Coming Oh golly I have an idea um will we be able to levitate the second coming well since Paul tells us that we will be caught up in the air so I suppose we'll have to levitate I genuinely flippant there have no idea I have no idea what kind of spiritual gifts we ask but one thing I know is this at the second coming whether we're alive or dead when it happens we will have resurrection bodies we will have any kind of body a body which is not less bodily less physical if you will than our present ones but rather more bodily we will be not fleshly bodies but spiritual bodies but notice that the distinction I'm quoting Paul there is you know the distinction he makes is not body versus soul but rather flesh versus spirit both of which are a kind of body so we will be bodily but will be bodily as Christ is now bodily Christ who appeared to the disciples on the road to Emmaus who appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus Christ who manifests himself on the altar every time we say Mass Christ who is in every tabernacle in every Catholic Church in the world Christ whose bodily presence now is found in the Church of God it's a different kind of model eNOS so I suspect that compared to that the reality for us at the second coming being able to levitate and and by locate and reach souls will be utterly trivial and seemed like so many cheap party tricks as for the question where are the Saints now well a lot of them are in heaven some of them are not some of them are still living and I think part of what sustains actually what sustains us in Hope is the occasional encounters that we do have with Christians who are manifestly Saints I've had those not me obviously good heavens but I have had encounters like that from time to time even in religious life and you meet somebody who you think this person is a saint they they live lives which we only make sense in the light of God's truth and the light of God's promises and I want to live that kind of life and those as much as the saints in heaven whose prayers we should seek those are the Saints that we need to look out for and imitate well I hope we all have an opportunity to you know meet and befriend Saints both in heaven and also while we're here on earth so our next question again from one of our you viewers on YouTube I'm actually kind of putting together a couple questions here but it is something along the lines of this does Jesus want us to look for signs so there have been a lot of things that would make one think it is the end of times right I mean just looking at the past hundred years for example so there seems to be you know this kind of tension between you know on the one hand do you just kind of proceed you know seeking Christ in sort of a blind way I guess and or do you look at the world around you and try to discern where we are in terms of you know his second coming related to the thing like two signs that you can see Shawn Shawn Shawn good question you're right of course that people have for the last hundred years or certainly for the last 250 years said to themselves look at what's been happening look at nuclear explosions and terrorist attacks and viruses and all the other things surely surely this is exactly what we're reading about in the book of the apocalypse but if you go back a hundred years of 200 years or a thousand years exactly the same attitude exactly the same kind of millenarianism a heightening of it undoubtedly round about the Year 1000 for a via Sreesanth Christ is not exactly contradictory that would be impossible but certainly somewhat paradoxical on this point as isn't poor in fact which makes it all the more likely that he truly knew the mind of Christ because we're told there will be signs and we're also told nobody knows the day or the hour and that day will come like a thief in the night when nobody expects it I don't think it does any harm provided you don't get overexcited about it look in the newspapers on the internet and see the discern signs of the times Christ has very harsh words for those who fail to do but I do think and I hope one of the things people will have taken away from my talk today is that the site we should really be looking at ah the life of the church the sites which we find in the sacraments most especially in the Eucharist and the signs that we find it one another we should fight in the lives of Christians signs of the coming of the kingdom and in the meantime as for the day of the hour know there's something sort of oddly consoling about that actually so actually this next question comes from one of our viewers on Facebook and it's very closely related to what you just said so you kind of answered it in one way already Derek on Facebook asks you mentioned stepping stones to the Second Coming would you say that the liturgy itself is a stepping stone toward the second coming that is exactly what I would say I've spoken about the mass and I hope made that fairly clear but that's just one example I'm another example it's not just the sacramental liturgy and consider also the Divine Office that's the office that we religious are obliged say every day and which is proposed to the faithful also and I think it's a really healthy thing for the faithful to say some or all of the Divine Office one of the things that that does is it gives you a stronger sense of Christian time a sense of the way in which the day is is shaped not just by our mundane lives by our secular work but also shaped by the divine providence a sense of the way in which the year also is shaped by the divine life by the Christian mysteries and a sense therefore that we live a fundamentally historical religion an eschatological religion a religion a life which is going somewhere so I do commit to you the praying of the Divine Office to give you that stronger sense that we are not just sitting calmly waiting but rather we are on a pilgrimage to the heavenly City very consoling and yeah very beautiful we if you ever do have the opportunity to pray the Divine Office you know again in a community it's a beautiful kind of entranceway usually if you go and stand in the back of the church at least I know this is the case with the Friars someone will come over to you eventually and help you if you look lost but you know if you don't have the opportunity to do that in the context of others it's there's resources online to that we can point you to okay so we have time for I think one more question so father Richard what is the Holy Spirit's exact role in the second coming is he a part of this is he involved in our lives could you elaborate a little bit more on that oh my that's a good one to weigh on isn't it the Holy Spirit's role in the second coming I'm not sure I have an answer for that really um I think I would want rather to emphasize the Holy Spirit's role in the meantime I mentioned already that the ascending of the Spirit at Pentecost functions I think as one of those stepping stones that's a particular moment in human history but of course the Holy Spirit comes to us at all moments and in sorts of ways comes to us in the sacramental life comes to us in his gifts comes to us in the moments of inspiration that we have from time to time the Holy Spirit is forming us constantly the Holy Spirit it shaping us as Christians is conforming us to Christ and is conforming us in particular to Christ as the one who is to come getting us ready to receive him getting us ready to recognize him when he comes and helping us in the depths of our hearts to lock for him as Paul says somewhere sometimes don't know what to say when we pray but the Spirit Himself speaks in us with what is it now stanag masala Latos one of my favorite Greek phrases which I think roughly speaking means inarticulate groanings sometimes even with the Holy Spirit's help all we can carry manage is in articulate groanings but what those groanings are they are the birth pangs of the new age the new creation that new creation which even now is being born and which will finally come to births when Christ comes in glory

Channel: The Thomistic Institute

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Id: UnqYklnMhx8

Length: 58min 28sec (3508 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 02 2020