Homily: Report

Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 33 / Sunday

Readings: Daniel 12.1-3 / Psalm 15.5 and 8, 9-10, 11 (R/1) / Hebrews 10.11-14,18 / Mark: 13.24-32

Sisters and brothers, have you wondered if the remarks in a report card – yours or your children’s – could have said something more about one’s year in school? Something more than the marks or academic performance? Something more than “there’s room for improvement” or “could have done better”?

I wonder what we would read about ourselves if there was such a thing as a spiritual report card – one to mark the end of this liturgical year? (It will end next Sunday with the Solemnity of Christ the King.) Like students with their report cards, I wonder what it will say about the quality of how we have encountered God and lived our Christian life and faith. 

We can have a sense of what the remarks of this report card might look like by reflecting on today’s readings. They invite us to make an end-of-year examination of how we are doing. 

An examination not in that traditional sense of being tested for what we have learned. But examination in that Ignatian sense of reviewing how we have responded to God and God’s action in our lives this past year. This review can also  help us identify areas we need to improve on to be in better relationship with God and one another next year.

The first examination question our readings pose us is: “How well have you kept the faith, especially in difficult times?” 

Both the first reading and the gospel speak about distress and tribulation, about the dead rising, about the darkened sun and moon and stars falling from the sky. 

I don’t know about you but they frighten me. They do because they speak about the end of the world and the inescapable reality that I — and those I love — will die. They frighten me a little more because they remind me of what happens after death: that I will stand before God who will weigh how selfish or charitable my acts of loving God and neighbor were. 

And this year they especially frighten me because I see how evil seems to abound more in our world as more people suffered. Terrorists and fanatics killed many innocent senselessly. More bigoted racists, self-righteous religious, and small-minded nationalists have come out to scapegoat, discriminate against and hurt minorities. The powerful and moneyed continued to put down the small, the little, the weak.

In our First Reading Daniel speaks of wars and distress besieging God’s people. But he also prophesizes about God taking care of them, especially those named in the “Book of Life”. Daniel’s prophecy instructed the Israelites to have faith in God and to live accordingly to God’s plan: that human life will not end in death but in the resurrection. Moreover, it was to remind them to live justly before God and with neighbour, so that in death, their lives will shine forever like the stars. His prophecy provided them a wisdom to live in God’s ways.

Daniel’s prophecy is also wisdom for us. Have you and I lived our Christian lives wisely this past year, especially, in our struggles and difficulties? Living with faith in God and in one another? And living in this way with enough trust to love God justly and to love others mercifully? 

Today’s readings pose a second examination question: "Have we observed how faithful God is with us?"

The Gospel sounds like the trailer of a disaster movie – the sun will darken; the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers in heaven will be shaken”. Here is Jesus describing the end times we associate with disaster, destruction, and death. But the real focus of his prophecy is God and God’s faithfulness. We see this in the person of the Son of Man will come with power and glory for all the wise and waiting. 

Can we have confidence in Jesus’ prophecy when we are so often suffering, in anxiety and filled with despair? We can when we recognise that Jesus is indeed the Son of Man he refers to. The Son of Man who comes in the middle of all that we consider chaotic, disordered and apocalyptic as God’s saviour for the world. Jesus is God’s saviour for us. He is God’s assurance that “all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well in the end”.* Jesus is our true hope. 

Part of the practice of Christian life is to pay attention to this truth playing out in our lives. It calls us to be observant to signs of life God blesses us – that fullness of life Jesus proclaimed he had come to give all.

Jesus teaches us how to do this in today’s gospel. “Learn a lesson from the fig tree,” he tells his disciples – and us. What is this lesson? That there is always hope whenever there is life. “Observe the fig tree’s branches becoming tender and leaves sprouting”, Jesus adds. These are signs of summer coming and winter left far behind. These are signs of life, not death. These are signs of hope in the small details of life that we so often forget in our pain, grief, and despair. 

Hope is the coming of the Son of Man, if we let him. Vigilance is required. The gospel tells us “when you see these things happening, know that he is near”. At times, we need to act promptly to discover that the Lord is near. At other times, we need to wait patiently for the Lord who will surely come – in his time, however. Whether the Lord comes immediately or slowly, he will surely come.

It is a wonderful gift to recognise the presence of the Lord and to be able to wait for his coming too. It is right and good to consider how God has visited us, saved us, labored for our good when everything seemed to have crashed and burned, or so we thought. Didn’t the Lord come, however promptly or belatedly, but always surely to you and me when

— your spouse said, “It’s ok, honey, I love you still” when you hurt him or her; 

— or when a colleague or classmate held your hand and whispered, “It’s over; let’s learn from the mistake and get on with life”;

— or when you were worried about the medical checkup only to hear your doctor say, “you're fine; you’re healthy”?

If your answer is “yes”, then the third examination question you must answer is this: “have I shared God’s presence and goodness in my life with others this year?” 

In my daily situations and challenges, do I announce hopelessness or do I proclaim hope? When I look at society, the people around, do I see bad news that I always complain or do I see good news, always praising and thanking God? Am I an announcer of doom and gloom or of the goodness of God’s reign? What do you think your report card will say about you this year?

Have we kept the faith? Do we appreciate God’s faithfulness? Have we shared God with others? These are three questions that invite us to evaluate how we have lived our Christian life and faith this year. Three questions we are called to write out our responses to.

God too has been watching us do this. I wonder what God’s report card to us will say? 

I believe that whatever God writes to us about our spiritual growth this year, it will be much more than a pass or a fail. I believe God will tell us how he deeply he appreciates our effort to be good Christians. 

And if God has to give us a grade, it would be an A+. Yes, an A+ for the efforts you and I have made – not always successful or perfect but always a good enough effort to improve as Jesus’ disciples. Good enough because when we accept that we are not yet fully like Jesus but on the way to becoming like him, then, we will have the humility to always say, “Come, Lord, Jesus, come”. And we can say this because our request is founded on the truth that Jesus is indeed near and ever ready to be with us and for us.

Now wouldn’t it be wonderful to read this in God’s report card to us as this liturgical year comes to an end?

*Julian of Norwich

Preached at Church of the Transfiguration

photo: www.aicechange.ca (Internet)