Wigilia: Poland's Christmas Eve Meal
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My mother died today 38 years ago. I mention that for two reasons: to ask you to say a prayer for her and to illustrate today’s Gospel [https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111025.cfm ]
The Gospel speaks about the unexpected, almost stealthy, coming of the Lord. “they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.”
My mother had been sick but I never realized just how much. We were going to the cardiologist in the hope of controlling her long uncontrolled high blood pressure. Little did I expect she would have a heart attack in that office – or that within a day she would be gone.
The Gospel warns against the human tendency to ignore preparation for death and judgment because we constantly can talk ourselves into believing that can can be kicked down the road. It can’t – but “hope” – fake hope – springs eternal. It’s fake because even Benjamin Franklin reminded us of the inevitability of death and taxes. Even taxes can be postponed, albeit usually at a penalty + interest price. The Grim Reaper, not.
Man encounters God in his particular judgment – at death – and in the general judgment, at the end of the world. Today’s Gospel applies to both. Death comes as a thief, despite our expectations of coming years of plenty on the bounty stored in our expanded silos (Lk 12:13-21). The end of the world will come just as covertly. People look at the Bible and say there will be “signs” about the end of the world. There will – but man has a consummate ability to misread and ignore them. (On the latter, read the opening verses of Puritan poet Michael Wigglesworth’s “Day of Doom”). [https://allpoetry.com/The-Day-Of-Doom ]
As the Church year winds down, it acquires an eschatological note: take stock of the frailty and fleeting nature of human life against the presumptuousness of human security. “I tell you, on that night there will be two people in one bed; one will be taken, the other left. And there will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken, the other left."
Don’t be a left behind.
John Grondelski (PhD Fordham) was former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University in New Jersey. He is a Catholic theologian with special interests in moral theology and the thought of St. John Paul II. All views are his own.
