Doomsday—Faith and Our Lord's promises to Catholics
Following his prophecies about Jerusalem's doom, Our Lord turns his attention more directly to the end of the world, making startling promises to his faithful.
Doomsday—Part I
In this chapter, Fr Coleridge tells us…
How Christ warns about the coming of false ‘Christs’ at the end
Why the safeguards against deception are divine faith and a love of truth
Where these safeguards are to be found, and their effects.
Following his prophecies about Jerusalem's doom, Our Lord turns his attention more directly to the end of the world, making startling promises to his faithful.
This Gospel is read on the First Sunday of Advent. Advent is often thought of as the start of the new liturgical year, but as we can see, this Gospel reading flows seamlessly from that of the last Sunday of Pentecost-tide.
This is because Advent itself is not just ordered towards Christmas as the commemoration of Christ’s birth in the flesh, but also towards his Second Coming in Glory.
We have addressed some of the reasons for this below:
Part II:
Doomsday for the World
From
Passiontide—Part I
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1889, Ch. XIV, pp 254-61
St. Matt. xxiv. 29–36; St. Mark xiii. 24–34; St. Luke xxi. 25, 26;
Story of the Gospels, § 144, 5.
Sung on the First Sunday of Advent
Pause in the prophecy
After the passage in which the destruction and desolation of Jerusalem was foretold, the prophecy of our Lord seems to pause before He proceeded to the signs which are to foretell the destruction of the world and the Day of Judgment.
It has been observed already as to this great prophecy, that it must be remembered that it is not only a prophecy of the two great events about which the disciples had asked Him, but also, and all through, a prophecy deeply tinged, so to speak, with a character of admonition, exhortation, and instruction.
It was our Lord’s last instruction to the Apostles of this kind, for, as we shall see, the instructions conveyed in the last great discourse on the evening of Holy Thursday were more doctrinal, and pitched in a more sublime key of thought.
Nor need we suppose that our Lord felt obliged to confine Himself within the limits of the questions which the Apostles had put to Him. In the minds of the Apostles, there was no very clear conception of what has been called the perspective of the prophecy, that is, they did not know how far in point of time the destruction of Jerusalem was separated from the end of the world, how much was to happen between the two, what a glorious unfolding was to take place of the counsels of God in the history of the successive ages of the Catholic Church—an unfolding of which we do not know how much more than what is already past remains to be seen by future generations.
History of the Church seen by our Lord
But to our Lord all was clear and distinct.
He saw the history of all the generations that have succeeded one another since the destruction of Jerusalem, as well as that of those which are yet to come, all the changing and shifting phases of the undying war against the truth of which the earth is to be the scene, all the succession of nations and empires, the vicissitudes which are to mark the path of the Church across the stormy waters, the heresies, the schisms, the glories of the saints as they rose in succession on the field, the consolations and triumphs of the Church of Christ as well as her sorrows and afflictions.
It is not wonderful if our Lord should have given a few words to this long and ever-shifting battle kept up by the power of Hell against Him and His. We may consider the passage that follows in this light, as intended by our Lord to give us guidance as to the chief dangers to Christians, dangers which were rife at the time of the Jewish revolt, dangers which will be certainly not less rife at the end of the world, dangers which are always pressing in the interval between these two catastrophes.
‘Lo here, lo there’
‘Then,1 if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ, He is there, do not believe him. For there shall rise up false Christs and false prophets, and they shall show great signs and wonders, so as to deceive, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect. Take ye heed, therefore, Lo, I have foretold you all things.’
Thus far St. Matthew and St. Mark use the same words. St. Mark does not continue the next sentence, which is given by St. Matthew, but has been anticipated by St. Luke in an earlier part of his Gospel.
‘If therefore they shall say to you, Behold He is in the desert, go ye not out, Behold He is in the closets, believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and appeareth even into the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. Wheresoever the body is, there shall the eagles also be gathered together.’
Two securities for Christians
It is clear that this whole passage contains two prophecies of warning.
The first is the warning against being seduced by false claims to the office of Christ, which will be continually made by the emissaries of evil. No matter what may be the signs and wonders which they may adduce in support of their claims, our Lord says peremptorily, do not believe them, ‘Behold I have told you beforehand.’ That ought to be enough for faithful servants of our Lord.
But there is also an assurance added, which St. Luke, though he omits it here, has already mentioned, where he records our Lord's former words in anticipation of the present prophecy.
This second assurance consists in this. Not only has our Lord foretold the coming of the false Christs and prophets, and told us not to heed their claims nor attend to the signs they show, but He adds further that there will always be evidence sufficient to fill the minds of the faithful with a conviction of His presence with them, that will be quite enough to make it superfluous for them even to consider the pretensions of the false teachers.
This seems to be the meaning of the words,
‘If therefore they shall say to you, Behold He is in the desert, go ye not out, Behold He is in the closets, believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and appeareth even into the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.’
The meaning of this passage seems to be something of this kind. We are kept from giving in to false doctrines and impostures of any kind, in two ways. The first way to see through the falsehood and penetrate the imposture is to remember the warnings of our Lord against seduction. This is one way of saving ourselves from being deluded. And in this way we gain a fresh evidence of the truth—for our Lord has told us beforehand that there are to be these pretended signs, which thus evidence to us their own falsity.
Another way is, that our minds should be so fully possessed by intelligent conviction of the truth which we believe that we have no need of the former process. All the false evidences do not touch us, because we have a clear hold of the truth and are satisfied with it. There cannot be two Christs, two Gods, two revelations, two ways of salvation.
‘There is one Body, one Spirit, one God, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all.’
And as a matter of fact, this possession of the truth is enough, and is the ordinary safeguard of the faithful against error.
The children of the Church have no obligation to examine for themselves the doctrines or the teachers of the day, new philosophies, new theories of the world, religion, and the like. The great majority of Christians live in peace under the guidance of the Church, and feel no necessity for examination of the details of her doctrine, knowing that her faithfulness to her office in teaching them is guaranteed by our Lord’s own promise.
Persons in such a disposition are not kept from listening to delusions simply by the authority of a command like that expressed in the text, ‘Go not after them, nor follow them.’
If they had no satisfaction in the truths they possess, no enjoyment, no repose, they might be caught by the attractiveness of novelty, and curiosity might lead them to the foolish and incautious examination of doctrines which are far above them, and which ought to be received with rejoicing faith.
But by the mercy of God it is with Catholics, to some extent, as our Lord said to the Samaritan woman, ‘We adore that which we know.’ Her fellow-townsmen told her, after our Lord had been with them but two days, ‘We now believe not for thy saying, for we ourselves have heard Him, and know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world.’2 Our faith rests on the witness of the Church, but the truth to which she witnesses feeds and satisfies and enriches and elevates and enlarges our minds.
Satisfaction in possessing the truth
The mind of man cannot live without truth. It is perpetually gnawed by what a modern writer has called…
‘The hungry thought, which must be fed.’
Falsehood can never satisfy it—and this is the history of the immense and restless curiosity by which the minds of men outside the Church are continually devoured.
The children of the Church are not a prey to this insatiable curiosity. Nothing but truth can appease the craving of the mind, but truth can, and when truth is received by faith, we have a light of God within to keep quiet the flutterings of curiosity, and the mind is at peace. It is the mercy of God which makes the act of faith the same in the learned as in the unlearned, in the man of highest genius and culture as in the most unlettered peasant and child.
And the truths of faith are not only true, they bring with them an assurance of their truth which nothing else possesses, but they are also rich and satisfying and sweet and consoling. The more men live in and on them, the more are their minds freed from the slavery of restlessness and uncertainty, and rise to the glorious liberty of the sons of God.
A mind perpetually occupied on heavenly things has no room for earthly. A mind fed on the pure contemplations of virgin souls has no room for images of defilement. A mind filled with charity, the love of God, and of its neighbour, has no room for anger, resentment, suspicion, and other evil passions. So a mind habitually fed on the truths of the Christian religion has no room for the fantastic dreams of false creeds or false prophets.
It is thus a kind of disloyalty for the children of truth to entertain the sophistries of error, which ought to fall off from the minds of Christians without tainting them. The security which is thus furnished against the cries, ‘Lo here, lo there,’ is internal, and is part of the contentment which is the reward and the fruit of humble faith. As St. Paul says, ‘We know whom we have believed,’ or trusted.
Double image of the lightning
But there is another and external security, in the world-wide Church, always the same, always one in charity and in faith. And it seems to be this that our Lord alludes to when He says that the great signs and wonders wrought by the false prophets might seduce, if it were possible, even the elect. For the elect are His chosen children, and their union with Him is so perfect in mind as well as in heart, that no errors can seduce them, and in the second place, they will have so firm a grasp on the truth secured by their loyalty to the Church, as to be again secured by that against all seduction.
It has been already said that the image of the lightning seems to contain two features.3 One feature is the extreme brilliancy of the lightning, which is seen at once everywhere. The other is the suddenness of the flash, which startles everyone.
There are also two senses to the Greek word which we translate ‘coming,’ when we speak of our Lord’s coming at the end of the world, and at other times. The one, and the etymological sense, is what answers to our English word ‘presence,’ and the other answers to the word ‘coming,’ or becoming present.
Thus if the lightning flash were permanent as well as brilliant, it would answer to the presence of our Lord in the Church always, and His coming at any particular time, as at the Last Day, would answer to the lightning flash breaking in for a moment upon the darkness. It may perhaps be understood in this passage in both senses, as has been said before. In any case this interpretation represents a signal truth.
Catholics are secured against the delusions which our Lord foretells by the fact that they live habitually in the light of the Church, which shines from ‘one end of heaven to the other.’ And when our Lord does really come, His coming will be as manifest and unmistakeable as the lightning flash. Men do not say, ‘Lo, here, or Lo, there,’ of a light which everyone can see and which no one can help seeing.
From Fr Henry James Coleridge, Passiontide—Part I
In the next part…
Signs before the end of the world
Other prophecies pointing towards the end
What it means for us to be watchful and ready.
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It has often been said that the readers of the Gospels have to notice the way in which the Greek word which answers to ‘then’ is used by the Evangelists, especially St. Matthew. In many cases it has no reference at all to what has preceded the sentence which it begins. It seems often to mean ‘at the time of which I am going to speak,’ rather than ‘at the time of which I have been speaking.’ In passages in St. Matthew, who does not follow the order of time in preference to that of thought, this may create great confusion unless the reader understands his meaning. The passage immediately before the verse we are speaking of in St. Matthew relates to the destruction of Jerusalem. The passage we are commenting on refers, as may be thought, to the period before the end of the world, either immediately, or indefinitely, but after the destruction of Jerusalem.
St. John iv. 42.
The Preaching of the Cross, Vol. III, p 84.