Last Sunday After Pentecost

Then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven.

The Temporal Cycle ends with this last week of the ecclesiastical year, and with it the history of the world which it has recalled to our minds throughout its course from Advent to this last Sunday after Pentecost. For this reason, the Breviary lessons, like the Missal, turn our attention to the Last Judgment. "For behold," says Micheas, "the Lord will come forth out of His place; and the mountains shall be melted under Him and the valleys shall be cleft as wax before the fire and as water that run down a steep place. For the wickedness of Jacob is all this and for the sins of the house of Israel." (First Nocturn). From these threats the prophet turns to promises of salvation: Christ will be born at Bethlehem, and His kingdom, the heavenly Jerusalem, will have no end.

The prophets Nahum, Habacuc, Sophonias, Aggeus, Zacharias and Malachias, whose books are read in the divine office in the course of this same week, add their testimony to that of Micheas. In our Lord's first words in today's Gospel he quotes Daniel's prophecy of the total and final ruin of the Temple at Jerusalem and of the Jewish nation at the hands of the Roman army, this "abomination of desolation" being the punishment incurred by the people of Israel for having crowned their long career of infidelity by the rejection of Christ.

We know how this prediction was fulfilled some years after our Lord's death, amidst such circumstances of distress, that if it had lasted long, not a single Jew would have escaped alive. It was God's will, however, that the siege of Jerusalem should be shortened for the sake of those who were converted as a result of so severe a lesson. It will be the same at the end of the world of which the destruction of this city is a type. For "then," at our Lord's coming, there will be tribulation of a still more agonizing kind.

Many impostors, among them Antichrist, will work wonders in order to be taken for Christ Himself, and then another type of "abomination of desolation" will reign in the Temple, identified by St. Jerome with "the man of sin who opposeth and is lifted up above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the Temple of God, showing himself as if he were God. He will come through the instrumentality of the devil, to destroy, and drive into banishment from God those whom he shall have gathered to his standard. But in this case also, St. Jerome continues: "God will shorten those days; lest even the elect, if that were possible, be deceived." (Third Nocturn)

For the rest, our Lord warns us to make no mistake as to the coming of the Son of Man in glory, without limitation of space or time and with the rapidity of lightning, in contrast to His first coming, veiled in sacred mystery and in one little corner of the world. Then all the elect will go to meet Him as eagles flock to their prey. His coming will be heralded by all kinds of castatrophes on earth and in the sky, while all the tribes of the earth shall mourn; "and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with much power and majesty." (Gospel, Matthew 24. 15-25)

"When," says St. Basil, "the inclination to sin comes upon you, I wish you would think of this dread and awful tribunal of Christ, where He will sit and judge on His throne on high. There every creature will appear, and stand trembling in His presence, and there shall we be led, one by one, to give an account of the actions of our life. And immediately afterwards those who in life have wrought much evil will be surrounded by fearful and hideous angels, who will throw them headlong into a bottomless pit where in impenetrable darkness burns a fire which gives no light; fear these things and pierced by this dread, use it as a bridle to help your soul from being drawn away by concupiscence into sin." (Third Nocturn). Further, in the Epistle, the Church exhorts us in the Apostle's words to "walk worthy of God" and to be fruitful in every good work," so that strengthened with all might according to the power of His Glory "We may endure all things in patience and joy," giving thanks to God the Father, who hath made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light, both now in the spirit and at the last day both in body and soul through the redeeming blood of "the Son of His love."

Wholly victorious over His enemies, who will rise from the dead to receive their punishment, and undoubted king of all the elect, who have believed in His coming and will rise to eternal glory of both body and soul, Christ will restore to His Father that kingdom which He has conquered at the cost of His own blood, as an act of perfect homage from Head and members alike. This will be the true pasch, the full passing into the real land of promise, and the taking eternal possession by Christ and His people of the heavenly Jerusalem where, in the temple not made with hands, God reigns as acknowledged sovereign "in whom we will glory all the day; and in whose name we will give praise forever." (Gradual, Ps. 43. 8-9)

Commentary from St. Andrew Daily Missal, 1952 edition.