Many Christians and those influenced by North American Christian culture have an existential dread called variously the Day of the Lord, the Last Judgement, Armageddon, what have you. Some other cultures share a similar one (past Norse pagan culture, seeing some current-day cachet, for instance, has Ragnarök). It's natural to be uneasy about an undefined end that one suspects may suddenly leap on them.
Lately we've been living with a lot of existential dread. Politics, Covid-19. Underlying religious anxieties. By rights we should be basket cases (and often we are), just waiting to melt down. St. Paul in today's Epistle for Mass (I Thes. 5.1-11) recognizes this end-times angst. What he tells us however is that we should not let it worry us, "For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ..." (I Thes. 5.9) He tells us that regardless what happens, Our Lord will look out for us and that at the very end whether we are alive or dead, we will be made alive at the wrap up of the event. We just need to prepare, helping each other do so, "...encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing." (I Thes. 5.11)
The Gospel reading is about the talents (Mt. 25.14-30), where we take what God has given us and build on it. This too, is for the purpose of building up and to provide that good account. We use those treasure stores within us, the abilities and resources granted us, not to just sit there (effectively burying them and forgetting them), but to actually do something with them and to make them grow. As people focused not on self but on others made in God's image, in each of whom we are to see Our Lord Jesus Christ, that means focusing on building them up, much as St. Paul encouraged us to do. Then at the end, no matter how we think we did, if we did SOMETHING with what we were given to help each other, then we too can look forward to the "well done" at the end of the age.
Anxious much? Yes, no one enjoys the rocky road getting there, but those roads will pass. The huge speed bumps in life will pass. The huge rock wall at the end of the age will shatter. But at the end, what will matter is what we did to build each other up and not tearing each other down.
Mosaic featured is a depiction of Saints Eugenia, Savina, Cristina, Anatolia, and Victoria from the Cathedral of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy, 5th Century AD
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