General. Today’s Liturgy still echoes the Word of the past Sundays and of the feast of Christ the King. We are in the heart of eschatological times now, preparing for the arrival of the Lord who will come to take us up with him to the Father where his abode is, on His right hand side interceding for us with uplifted arms and blood dripping from the nail wounds in his hands. It is a continual giving up of one’s life, an extension in time and space of Jesus’ unique sacrifice on Calvary, when he gave up his body and blood for us. As Christians we also participate in this giving up of ourselves or sacrifice which will make us worthy of entering Heaven and stand on the right hand of the Father, next to Jesus.

Isaiah. This is an end-of-times reading which may also be understood as a beginning of renewed times. Past ways of doing things have led man to his destruction and now man realizes that to find his real fulfilment in the world, he has to look up again to Sion, to walk along God’s pathways. Law and Prophecy go together, as do the teaching of the Word as now done by the Church which is being constantly renewed in the Spirit.

Epistle to the Romans. St Paul exhorts us to take stock of the times we have been living in, getting to be ever more forgetful of God as we progressively age. Yet now we have to realize that as years pass by, we are drawing closer to God and He to us and that so is our salvation. The actions of night and debauchery are past and we should accept the grace of God and wear the armour of light. When we were baptized we have put on Christ, the Apostle also says elsewhere, and in abandoning the vices which have taken us out of God’s way we would be preparing ourselves for the arrival of the Light of the world.

St Matthew. The Lord will be coming when man would have perhaps lost faith in Him and hope that He will be entering (incarnating Himself in) the world and our lives. We might then not recognize Him, or the form He will take, just as the Jews did not expect Him to show himself up as an ordinary rabbi, or devout Jew, claiming God to be His Father. To the faithful, whose eyes are not obscured with the glaze of lust, they will recognize the Lord in whatever form He chooses to present Himself to us, both individually and collectively by re-entering and taking in His hands human history.

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