9.  Friday after Ash Wednesday

Today is a day of the Cross.  It is good to set down my travel gear and just rest my ashened head a while in the hope the Cross gives.  

The Lord Jesus was pilgrim long before me and all of us.  He left his Father's side and journeyed--in the dark of night, Isaiah tells--into the human world. Flesh covered, he began the pilgrimage to the Cross, passing through family life in Nazareth and venturing out into a world that knew him not.  He walked among the crowds whose sufferings impelled him to his destiny.  He saw, was touched, and he touched back.  He made pilgrimage through the rubble of broken ancestral traditions, up and down the mounds of despair over health and relief, over new beginnings and sense of well-being.   Often weary himself, he walked on, even with blessing for those who cursed his way.  He found walk-mates and mentored their pilgrim steps.  How could he not stumble when they bretrayingly abandoned him in the darkest hour of his Via? 

His pilgrimage brought him to the Wood and propelled him beyond.  It is in that "beyond" that I rest.  Christ Jesus now walks toward me, toward all of us.  He journeys, back-packed with glory.  He is pilgrim anew, halleluya!  

Will we meet in the sunlight or in a night of darkness on the way?  It doesn't matter.  Staying the course matters, the course toward the uplift of all things.  We are pilgrims for that.  It is the thought of that that allows the pilgrim to rest a while before the next step.

8. Thursday after Ash Wednesday

How do I see the sinful weaknesses I am personally focusing on this Lent?   They have to do with desire and anxiousness.  Both are rooted in my inability (unwillingness?)  to trust God.  Is that not the ultimate conversion? 

I am duped by desire’s “promise” to fill me—and it will, I think,  but only superficially and temporarily.  What does Augustine say, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You”?  Desire is more urgent in me and quite impatient with the contemplation of God and the story of God’s great love in Jesus Christ.  That story is the story of present consolation challenged by delay until he comes again.  “Already but not yet fully,” we, the Church, say.  And I am not the only one groaning about that.  All of creation is, all the brothers and sisters around me as well.  Nonetheless, we, the Church, are tempted to change the capital “E” of the Blessed Eschaton into the small “e” of an eschaton of delusion in the here and now.

Resisting that temptation takes the discipline of a trusting pilgrim.  Part of our Christian challenge is to wait while walking. There is celebration, yes, but not yet ecstasy.  The great calming is on its way.  If I do not trust God and God’s great plan for me and for all so clearly revealed in the Scriptures, I will—and do—let the immediacy of desire overshadow the delayed, but greater grace of the Eschaton at his return.  I sin.

On my penitential way this Lent, I shall pray the Psalms of trust.

7. Ash Wednesday 2024

 I could not help but wonder how many of us in line for ashes today were aware that Lent goes beyond a personal agenda of reconciliation.  Did we know, as we moved forward to receive the ashes, that we were participating in the Great Reconciliation to arrive with the Eschaton?

My Lenten program of recovery is a part of my responsibility for the ultimate recovery of all humanity at the Second Coming of Christ.  Today again, as I welcomed again the imposition of ashes on my head, I was pledging to reform sinful behavior that I was once saved from by my Baptism.  By my Baptismal vows I once swore to align myself completely with the Gospel that is saving the world.  I have been unfaithful to that solemn pledge, deliberately allowing myself to step out of or, at least, step aside from the transformational power of the Paschal Mystery of Jesus in our world.  I lost heart for the event of the Eschaton.  I diminished its witness, and in some way, its saving effect on others in the Church and world.  I stopped being part of the grand solution.

In effect, Lent is a journey of return to being the New Humanity in Christ.  It involves all of us who have chosen against it by our sin.  Today I join with fellow penitents to correct the course of our lives toward the Eschaton, allowing baptismal grace to renew us after an unfaithful fall, reconcile us to God and one another and redirect our steps in the  pilgrimage.

6. Waking up in the Kingdom

                                                                                                                                                     eschaton [és-kuh-ton]:
                                                                                                the consummation of history at Christ’s Second Coming

when the Kingdom of God will be fully realized

in the reconciliation of all humanity with God

and the creation of a new heaven and earth

When I awake in the morning, I am conscious of beginning to spend another day in the Kingdom.  

 

In accordance with biblical revelation, I believe that God has been intervening over the course of the millennia since the sin of Adam and Eve to restore humanity to its truest destiny.  God has been pursuing the great Reconciliation, symbolized by the Garden of Eden in Genesis.  Israel’s participation in the divine pursuit, namely, Covenants, Prophets, Davidic kings, Captivity, Reconstruction, and Messianic expectation are all behind us.  The Night has passed.

 

By his death and resurrection, Christ has spoken the definitive “yes” of humanity to God, reversing for good the downward fall of human life.  In Christ, the Reconciliation has been inaugurated in power.  It is the Great Dawn, which the New Testament names “the Kingdom of God.” 

 

Yet, as Christ himself revealed, it is a Kingdom on its way to completion.  The fullness of the reconciling grace of his Paschal Mystery will be experienced only at the Parousia when he returns again.  Then will be the Great Day of the Ultimate Reconciliation of the human family with God, with itself, and with the entire cosmos—“New Heavens and a New Earth,” Eden Restored, the Eschaton, as revealed in the Book of Revelation.

 

And so, I awake each day to living with power and joy and thanksgiving in the “already” of the Kingdom, and, at the same time, hoping in, proclaiming, and activating the "not-yet" fully arrived Kingdom in the affairs of this day.  I rise to celebrate what is already in Christ and actively work with fellow believers toward what is yet to be at the Second Coming.

 

This is the pilgrimage.  This is another day of Christian spirituality.

The great temptation, of course, is to simply settle into the "already," to live the day in the "present," to be absorbed by what is immediately in front of me.  But the contemplative in me will not be satisfied with that.  The contemplative in me wants to view, understand, and live the current experience in the full context of Christian faith.  The present is a moment in eschatological movement toward the Eschaton.  The future is the destiny of the present. The Eschaton gives the present its meaning and vocation.  "Here we have no lasting city" (Heb 13:14).

What happens to Christian life if it loses eschatological perspective?  What happens to a child who loses sight of adulthood--where will the child end up?  Living without the horizon of the Second Coming of Jesus, Christian believers become like "blind leaders of the blind . . . both will fall into a ditch" (Mt 15:14).  The pilgrimage is stunted.  Arrival is delayed.  Christian celebration is soon poisoned by cynicism.  Christian service eventually loses its momentum.  Daily life in the "already" without the "not yet" becomes a hopeless, vicious circle.

Absent the Eschaton, at the end of the day, faith will not be able to rest its head on its pillow in peace.  

5. The Eschaton's Spirit

eschaton [és-kuh-ton]:

the consummation of history at Christ’s Second Coming

when the Kingdom of God will be fully realized

in the reconciliation of all humanity with God

and the creation of a new heaven and earth

The Hebrew Scriptures teach that the Spirit of God hovered over the chaos at the beginning, enabling the very good creation.  It was the Spirit who spoke through the Prophets of Israel, as God intervened in history to draw humankind towards an ultimate reconciliation with and in God after the Original Sin.  

The power of the Spirit incarnates the Son in the womb of the Virgin Mary, empowering the Messianic ministry for the inauguration of the Kingdom of God with his death and resurrection.  The Spirit is sent to accompany the first fruits of redeemed humanity, the Church, on its pilgrimage toward the full realization of the Kingdom at the Second Coming of Jesus.  

This eschatological accompaniment of the Spirit is characterized by operations of:

• witness to God's transforming work in Christ, already in every age and fully at the End 
• protection of the Truth and the Truth-Sayers on the journey toward the Ultimate Reconciliation
• assurance of Apostolic leadership for the accomplishment of the mission until Christ's return
• empowerment for love in individual believers and in the Church as a whole to bring the Kingdom to fullness
• transfiguration of all created things toward a new heaven and a new earth at the Parousia. 

The Spirit hovers! comes! breathes! overflows! anoints! prophesies! Christifies! vivifies! prays! speaks! glorifies! recreates! births! tries! reminds! aids! promises! guards! overshadows! sends! adopts! animates! transforms! reveals! sanctifies! heals! testifies! infuses! consecrates! enables! ignites! blesses! exorcises! graces! purifies! fructifies! counsels! teaches! renews! saves! comforts! sanctifies! unifies! enlightens! gladdens! -- the Spirit at work as Bringer of the Blessed Eschaton!

Blessed be the Kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever!  

                                                                                                               (Opening of the Byzantine Liturgy)

4. Christ Eschaton

                                                                                            

eschaton [és-kuh-ton]:

the consummation of history at Christ’s Second Coming

when the Kingdom of God will be fully realized

in the reconciliation of all humanity with God

and the creation of a new heaven and earth

There are many depictions of Christ.  He can be a mosaicked Byzantine icon or the well-groomed face on a holy card.  He can be an image of heavenly Mercy or the Man of Sorrows.  He can appear as a face aglow with Mt. Tabor glory or the grayed face on a Holy Shroud. He can have the serene countenance of an Emmaus companion or the anguished look of a soul darkened with Gethsemane agony.  He can be a fiery Final Judge or an expressionless stone face atop a high mountain.  He can have the appearance of a tender-hearted Good Shepherd or a wearied itinerant rabbi.  He can look like a Sacred Heart or a Middle Eastern messiah.  

But what would the face of the Bringer of the Blessed Eschaton look like, the one who was present from the beginning and hidden in the heart of his Father until the appointed time? What are the looks of a fully human, fully divine person with striking resemblance to a Jewish Virgin Mother?  What does one see on the face of someone with prophetic ancestors, who has spent his days peering into the pain-filled eyes of human guilt and poverty?  How do the traces of trial and conviction and execution appear on a resurrected man’s face?  What countenance does an ascended Eternal Negotiator have while in constant intercession before the Father on behalf of an entire human race?  What is the look on someone's Mystical Body face, enduring the ups and downs of centuries on its way to the End?  What is the determined look of someone who is continuously coming  back from the End Times to close the gap with an unpredicted present age?  What is the look of success on the face of one who has completed a cosmic mission to reconcile all things in himself?  

The face-to-face encounter with a person brings with it signals for intimacy, interaction and collaboration.  When I look at the face of the Bringer of the Blessed Eschaton, what connection, what relationship, what inspiration is stirred in me?  In what spirit do I listen and speak?  How am I compelled to reorganize my thoughts and repurpose my activities?  In what new horizons do I begin to live and toward what new horizons do I walk?  What new companionship for life is mine and how does the one whose face I see change the trajectory of my journey?

It is the same, and far more significant, when all of us together take a communal look at him, the Christ, who is the Blessed Eschaton. 

 

3. Father of the Eschaton

eschaton [és-kuh-ton]:

    the consummation of history at Christ’s Second Coming

             when the Kingdom of God will be fully realized

                            in the reconciliation of all humanity with God

and the creation of a new heaven and earth

Who is the God of the Eschaton?  To whom am I praying?

With the eyes of biblical faith, I bow my head 

• to the God who, out of love at the beginning, created all things good 
• to the God who saw that goodness corrupted by the sinful "no" of Adam and Eve 
• to the God who has ever willed that creation's goodness be ultimately restored in a Kingdom reflective of Eden; 
• to the God who never ceases to take initiative in human history toward accomplishing that end
• to the God who once covenanted with the people of Israel as principal instrument, however faltering, of the restoration 
• to the God, who sent the Son, Jesus, to speak humanity's final and irrevocable "yes" to God by his death and resurrection 
• to the God who now accompanies, in the Spirit, a new and already redeemed People of God, the Church, on pilgrimage for the rest of history toward the fullness of the Kingdom
• to the God who, through the witness and sacramental power of that pilgrim People, draws all humanity with her to the full realization of the Kingdom at Christ's Second Coming 
• to the God who will delight eternally with all of the beloved creation at the Blessed Eschaton, the Ultimate Reconciliation in a new heaven and a new earth.

As an individual believer, how do I speak to the God of the Eschaton?  For what do I pray? 

As the People of God, what is our conversation with the God of the Eschaton?