there is an end - 33rd sunday B 2018

One of the wonderful things I was taught as a must-have for a visitor like me are the applications on my phone that give me directions.  They predict quite accurately the time the bus or the taxi or the train arrives.  They estimate the travel time from my location to the place I intend to go, factoring in traffic, obstructions on the road, including the presence of the police. No more shivering on the sidewalk waiting for the bus, no more waiting on subways inhaling the stench, no more fidgeting whether I will be on time or not. I know when to run and I know when to simply walk leisurely.  I can practically plan to the minutest detail my whole trip.  Then all of a sudden as I come to church today, I hear in the gospel, Jesus telling me, you know not the day or the hour.  And Jesus is not referring to the weather but the day and the hour when the sun will be darkened,and the moon will not give its light,and the stars will be falling from the sky.  We do not know when.

Two things come to mind. 

First there is definitely an end to everything, and it is an end we cannot know when.  Two years ago, out of curiosity, I went to a website called deathclock.com.  It is a website which can predict, or so it claims, when you die.  Fill-up the questionnaires which included date of birth, vices, medical history etc., then press enter.  Then after a few seconds viola, the date of your death.  I will die on March 21 2033 at the age of 67.  And I keep reminding our seminary driver back in the Philippines that if I die before 2033 it would be all his fault for not driving carefully. Actually it’s just a playful joke, a morbid joke you play every Halloween.  But the fact remains that there is an end to everything including this world as we know it, including my life as I have lived it.  Heaven and earth will pass away… which we do not know when.

And yet there is another side to this picture.  One time some of us priests were discussing about a sister of one of the priest who was sick and dying.  There was no hope for survival.  Being however a priest and a brother we sensed that it was difficult to let go especially with a lot of medical options available to prolong life.  I said to the group, "but there is eternal life."  And I remember everyone’s faces - they looked at me as if I said something alien, something they heard only for the first time. But that is our faith, a faith we would bring up only in the funeral and only with hesitancy to somebody still breathing.  Yes there is an end to this life, but yes there is eternal life.  "Those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake and they shall live forever, to shine brightly and be like the stars".  It is not as if I am not afraid of death.  I am.  But I must not cling to life, to this life as if it is the only life.

Second, in telling us this, Jesus is implying that the greatest punishment in life is regret, regret for the things we could have done; regret for the things we could have given; regret for the things when we could have loved better.  It would have been different if my parents were still alive today and I can still do what I now know needs to be done.  That’s how I feel at times, and even though things happened years back, the feelings of remorse makes things fresh and vivid.  And imagine if these feelings as Jesus said were eternal.

Thursday is thanksgiving.  Be thankful to each other now, because regrets can be eternal.