The Day of the Lord! Homily for the Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

My dear brothers and sisters in Our Lord Jesus Christ; even for those of us who live close to the Equator, the days are short by the month of November. Dusk comes quickly and the nights are longer. There is a sense of foreboding, the sense of the coming of the end of time. It is appropriate then, that Holy Mother Church dedicates the month of November to the memory of the souls in purgatory. But, it is not just the death of those before us that the Church wishes to draw to our attention. Through its placement at the end of the calendar year, when the days are shorter, the nights longer, and where in northern climes nature begins to take on a deathly pallor, Holy Mother Church seeks to turn our own minds to the inevitable fact of nature, that we too will die! “Memento Mori!” the Church whispers to us, “Remember your death!”

And because the Catholic Church does not operate only within the realm of the natural, but the supernatural as well, it draws to our attention, not just the inevitable end of our own individual lives, but the impending destruction of all the earth, when the rigtheous judge will come to take stock of our actions and those of the rest of the world.

Listen, to the penultimate stanza of the hymn Dies Irae, once part of the liturgy for the commemoration of All Souls, and of requiem masses:

Lacrimosa dies illa,
Qua resurget ex favílla
Iudicandus homo reus:
Huic ergo parce, Deus

Ah! that day of tears and mourning,
From the dust of earth returning
Man for judgement must prepare him,
Spare, O God, in mercy spare him.

If all the certainties of this world are condemned to be burned away, and come in judgement before the King of Righteousness, it behooves us to get our acts in order before it is too late. This, is what the month of November is for, as we pray for the dead.

But Holy Mother Church does not deal in unnecessary terror and depression. Her message is always one of hope. Placed at the end of the calendar year, this month of recollection on death, is the appropriate ante-chamber before we enter into the penitential and preparatory period of Advent; the period when we prepare for the coming, or the returning, of the light into the world!

Christmas, as well you know, is not merely a celebration of the birth of Our Lord; that is to say, the celebration of a past event. It is a celebration of the fact that there is now a light in the darkness, and that – thanks to the Resurrection – this light, like the natural light over the course of the months from Christmastime, will only get brighter!

November is, therefore, only the start of a longer journey that we will embark on, one that will end with the joy of Easter. In the months that are to come, we will enter into a syncopated rhythm, first the restraint and abstinence of Advent, followed by the celebrations of Christmas, the lull of Ordinary time (or the Sundays after Epiphany as per the older tradition) and then, once again, the discipline and rigour of Lent, until finally the joy of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday!

With this longer period in mind, there is a case to turn November into an ante-chamber for Advent. A time not necessarily of fast, but one of somber reflection, turning away, and not just through our prayers for the faithful departed, from the ephemeral bright lights of the world, to the certainties of the eternal. We will not be alone when taking up this challenge; some of our monastic brethren have begun what is known as monastic lent, right after the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September 14. They will have just one meal a day until Easter.

Whilst not making a call for all of us to take up the monastic Lent, I am making a call for a greater embrace of austerity and asceticism in our lives. In the Gospel today Our Lord cautions us:

Stay awake and be ready!
For you do not know on what day your Lord will come.

We do not indeed know the day of the final judgement, when the world will be reduced to ashes. But we do know, how to prepare ourselves and be ready for that day. Let those with ears hear, and those with hearts prepare!

(Image reference: The Burial of the Count of Orgaz (detail), El Greco, 1586 – 1588, Iglesia de Santo Tomé, Toledo.)