nunblog

Tomorrow will be the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time. You know what that means: next week is Christ the King--and after that, ADVENT! So expect to begin hearing some real "end times" passages in the liturgy for these final weeks of the Church Year. We actually had a hint of that in today's readings: the first reading from Wisdom was a dramatic and poetic rendering of the Exodus. The lovely Advent hymn, "Lo how a rose e're blooming" takes inspiration from this passage. According to the book of Wisdom, it was "when half-spent was the night" that God's Word/Wisdom "leapt down from the royal throne" to the "doomed land," carrying out judgment on the enemies of God's people and beginning a new creation.
Doesn't it seem like whenever "end times" are spoken of, the focus is almost always on death and destruction, rather than on a new creation? Yet the book of Revelation, for all the war and horsemen and bowls of wrath it contains, is really about the dawn of a new heavens and new earth.
That's really something to look forward to this Advent!