Reading for the Day: Don't They Know It's the End of the World?

A priest recently shared in his homily that the readings toward the end of the Liturgical year tend to be about eschatology. And starting this exercise of writing short reflections based on the readings for the day at this time of the year really drives home the point. In the Gospel for the day, Jesus tells his disciples the end of times will be preceded by wars and insurrections, powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place.

Some people claim that the world will end on December 21, 2012 and I can imagine that they'll be spooked by all these readings around October/ November next year not realizing that these eschatological readings are par for the course at this time of year.

My thought for the day is more of an observation of how caught up the Gospel writers were on this talk about the Second Coming. I remember two points from my theology classes back in college. First that these writers really believed that the Second Coming was near. And second, that what they wrote was not just a historical account but also a pastoral letter (an extended parable based on events, as it were) to the early Christians. Given the frequency with which the question of the end of the world is brought up in the Gospels, I can only imagine that those early Christians must have really been in a state of anticipation but also of discouragement when the Second Coming was taking so long.