Time of War

Separating the known from the unknown in this war

10/15/2023

Is 25:6-10a On this mountain the LORD of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines. On this mountain he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death forever. The Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from every face; the reproach of his people he will remove from the whole earth; for the LORD has spoken. On that day it will be said: "Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us! This is the LORD for whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!" For the hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain.

I received a text message last Saturday from a friend in Springdale asking, “How do we/Catholics feel or believe about [the Book of] revelation as it relates to end of times and today’s occurrences, example Israel’s war.” She was wondering if this war meant the end of the world, as Revelation describes it. Have you been wondering that lately?

Last Friday Oscar Burney, a high school student at Ozark Catholic Academy, said they had been discussing similar events in school, like the Israeli War. And just yesterday, a parishioner at I.C. asked me if he should arm himself in case the fighting came to Fort Smith, to protect me, of course.

At times of such fear and confusion, I find it helpful to separate what I know from what I don’t know. Why? Well, because the unknown causes fear, anxiety, and irrational behavior; whereas when we ground ourselves in what is known, we find peace and rationality. So, today I want to help you separate the “wheat of what we know” from the “chaff of what we do not know” regarding this war and the end times. Blow away the chaff and hold on to the wheat.

First, the chaff: we do not know when the world will end. Jesus states in the strongest possible terms in Mk 13:32, “But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Now, if the angels in heaven, and even Jesus in his human nature, don’t know the exact moment of the end times, then you and I don’t either.

Nor does the guy writing the online blog who claims to know. Or, the guy whose Youtube end-of-the-world video has gone viral. In other words, the more people think it is the end of the world, then it probably isn’t. St. Paul told the Thessalonians, the end would come “like a thief in the night” (1 Thess 5:2). Thieves don’t come when everyone in the house is awake and armed.

Now let me offer you three stalks of wheat of what we do know about all this. First, if we carefully examine human history, we discover a sober fact, war is far more common than peace. Just in the last thirty years, we have endured the War in Congo, the Syrian Civil War, the Darfur Conflict, the Iraqi War, the Afghan War, the War Against Boko Haram, the Yemeni Civil War, and most recently the Russian-Ukranian War.

I remember as a teenager riding in the back of the car with my brother and sister in the backseat after Mass on Sunday. And just for a few fleeting minutes, we were perfectly quiet and at peace. And my parents kept eying us in the backseat figuring the quiet meant something was seriously wrong. And we felt it, too, and felt like someone should be fighting or arguing about something. In other words, war is humanity’s natural habitat; peace is a foreign land.

So when a war erupts in Israel and Gaza, we should not be shocked or surprised. Peace should surprise us. Ecclesiastes 3:8 says, “There is a time of war and a time of peace,” but human history is far more frequently a “time of war.” That is the first stalk of wheat of what we know. War is the norm, peace is the novelty.

The second stalk of wheat is the best way to interpret the passages of Scripture that talk about the end of the world? Now besides Revelation Jesus himself says a lot about the end times. In his last public speech called The Olivet Discourse, Jesus lays out in stunning detail “the end of the world.”

But Jesus was not predicting the end of THE whole world, but rather the end of A smaller world, namely, the Jewish world centered on the Jerusalem Temple. And that Jewish world would come to a catastrophic end in 70 A.D. when the Roman Tenth Legion under General Titus reduced that magnificent Temple to rubble. The only part of the massive Temple Mount standing today is the West Wall, called the Wailing Wall. Why? Because the Jews are wailing the end of their world.

In other words, the end of the world has already happened in the scriptural sense, with the destruction of the Old Testament. And the end of the whole world still remains above our paygrade, even above the angels’ acumen. I am convinced that this interpretation is the best way to understand those disturbing passages in Scripture that talk about “the end of the world.” And that is our second stalk of wheat: the Scriptural end times have been fulfilled.

And third stalk of wheat is how the end times is often described as the second coming of Christ, or the Parousia. And clearly we await the glorious return of Christ seated on the clouds accompanied by legions of angels to claim his rightful throne as the King of kings and Lord of lords.

But besides that ultimate Parousia at the end of time, there is also a provisional Parousia every Sunday at Mass. How so? Well, the word Parousia in Greek means not only “coming” but it also means “presence”. In the 3rd century, the word parousia was used to refer to the visit of a king or dignitary to a city – a visit arranged in order to show the king’s magnificence to the people.

When we come to Mass on Sunday, we witness the Parousia, the Presence, of Christ on the altar. And when Christ the King comes disguised in the form of Bread and Wine, we all kneel in humble adoration. The reason we kneel is the King is present and the Parousia is occurring. The priest genuflects and the altar server rings the bells (unless he forgets to).

We get a little preview of coming attractions of the second coming, the Parousia, at every Mass. That coming is what we should be preparing ourselves for, instead of carrying weapons in case the fighting comes to Fort Smith. And that is the third stalk of wheat of what we know: the second coming of Christ happens every week. Prepare for it.

During the Civil War, General Sherman famously said, “War is hell.” And maybe sometimes we need a healthy fear of hell, like this war, in order to restore our faith in heaven. Sometimes war and suffering and death makes us better Christians; whereas peace and prosperity only make us better pagans.

Praised be Jesus Christ!