“Till the moon be no more” (Ps.71:7)
The
world we live in will not always exist as we know it. But we do not
know when the world will end. Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us to watch
and pray, because He may come at a time we do not expect. He gives us
this information:
“Heaven
and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But of that
day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but the Father
only. And as it was in the days of Noe, even so will be the coming of
the Son of Man. For as in the days before the flood they were eating and
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day when Noe
entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and
swept them away; even so will be the coming of the Son of Man”
(Mt.24:35-39).
The
people of these times are like the foolish people of the time of Noah.
They will end up like those who perished in the Great Flood because they
are focused on the things that are passing away, like Pride festivals
and parades featuring the rainbow flag. Our Lord wept over the city of
Jerusalem, because like the people in Noah’s time, the people of
Jerusalem were unprepared for what was to come. We read from the Gospel
of the ninth Sunday after Pentecost:
“At
that time, when Jesus drew near to Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept
over it, saying, ‘If you had known, in this your day, even you, the
things that are for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.
For days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a rampart
about you, and surround you and shut you in on every side, and will dash
you to the ground and your children within you, and will not leave in
you one stone upon another, because you have not known the time of your
visitation’” (Lk.19:41-44).
Those
who knew our Savior had their horizons greatly expanded, because their
eyes were opened about sin and the vain love of this world. They
followed Him because, as St. Peter said to Our Lord,
“Thou
hast the words of everlasting life, and we have come to believe and to
know that thou are the Christ, the Son of God” (Jn.6:69).
Happy
are those who believe as Peter did! We have little excuse if we do not,
because we have had the Gospel preached to us. Our Lord told us to read
the signs of the times, and to watch for the things that will happen
before the end. The Christians who lived in Jerusalem remembered what He
told them, and they fled to the hills before the Romans surrounded the
city in 70 A.D. and leveled it to the ground, with unbelievable
suffering for its inhabitants.
Jesus
told us who would live in the days before His return, that we must also
read the signs of the times. There are wars and rumors of wars. Think
of Russia and North Korea! There are signs in the sun, and the moon, and
the stars, with disturbances of nature on the earth – floods,
earthquakes, violent storms with destructive winds and floods, even
terrible hailstones falling in some places. For this country, a full
eclipse of the sun is predicted for August 21st, just a
couple of weeks away. The orbits of the sun and the moon have changed,
and the moon has turned on its side. This can be checked by careful
observation.
These
strange things are not unlike the things that happened in the time of
Noah, and again at the time of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.
Think of the strange affliction that took the firstborn of the
Egyptians, while the Israelites escaped into the desert. Think of the
parting of the waters of the Red Sea allowing the Israelites to cross
over, but rushing back to sweep Pharaoh and his army into the sea.
Later, just before the Israelites were to enter the Promised Land,
Joshua led them against their enemies, the Amorites, and this is what
happened:
“While
they (the Amorites) fled before Israel along the descent from
Beth-Horon, the Lord hurled great stones from the sky above them all the
way to Azeca, killing many. More died from the hailstones than the
Israelites slew with the sword. On this day, when the Lord delivered up
the Amorites to the Israelites, Josue prayed to the Lord, and said in
the presence of Israel: Stand still, O sun, at Gabaon, O moon, in the
valley of Aialon! And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, while
the nation took vengeance on its foes… The sun halted in the middle of
the sky; not for a whole day did it resume its swift course”
(Jos.10:11-13).
Could
these things still happen to the unbelieving world even today? Sister
Lucy of Fatima revealed what she had been told the Blessed Virgin Mary
in 1944:
“I
felt my spirit inundated by a mystery of light that is God and in Him I
saw and heard: the point of a lance like a flame that is detached,
touches the axis of the earth, and it trembles: mountains, cities, towns
and villages with their inhabitants are buried. The sea, the rivers,
the clouds, exceed their boundaries, inundating and dragging with them,
in a vortex, houses and people in a number that cannot be counted. It is
the purification of the world from the sin in which it is immersed.
Hatred, ambition, provoke the destructive war. After I felt my racing
heart, in my spirit a soft voice said: ‘In time, one faith, one baptism,
one Church, Holy Catholic, Apostolic. In eternity, Heaven’” (returntofatima.org).
We
must remember what Our Lord told us, and prepare ourselves for what is
to come. Those who trust in Him and are obedient to Him have nothing to
fear, because He is the King of justice and peace, as we read in the
psalms: