The ancient Greeks believed that the universe is eternal, without beginning or end, and many cultures, religions, and civilizations have understood history as an endless cycle of random events succeeding each other without direction or meaning or purpose. In this view, history is just one damn thing after another, and it goes on forever, more often than not in misery and injustice.
As strange as that cosmology may seem to Christians, stranger still is the modern hope of comic books and science fiction in the multiverse, a mind-bending reality in which parallel universes exist simultaneously, sometimes colliding or interacting with each other, but usually distinct and all equally chaotic.
And in all the many universes of this fantasy, time is thought to be fluid, running ever backwards and forwards at once, and if we but had the right technology, spiritual enlightenment, or magical power we could, it is dreamed, surf spacetime itself in all directions, thus becoming masters of multiversal existence rather than what we truly are: creatures who live in one time and place and then die.
But amusing as these concepts may be to sophomores in their first philosophy course or to popcorn-noshing movie goers, the real truth about the origin and destiny of the universe is otherwise. And that truth is part of the Gospel of salvation revealed by our Creator in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.
Into the ancient world with its cyclical view of history in an eternal universe, the revelation of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob came like a sudden burst of illumination, as in ‘Let there be light.’ And in that revelation, we learn that while God is eternal, the universe he made from nothing is not.
The cosmos had a beginning, and it will have an end. And more than that, the universe has a purpose, a meaning, and a sacred moral order, and all events in the history of the universe move from first to last, from Alpha to Omega, towards the same end point: the consummation of the universal Kingdom of God in the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb once slain who lives forever.
This gift of divine revelation confirms that history is not cyclical, and it is not just one damn thing after another. History is the unfolding in spacetime of the Father’s eternal plan of salvation for the whole human race, and every human person is made in the image and likeness of God to share his divine glory world without end. And the beginning and end of history are the same: the Logos tou Theo, the reason or Word of God by whom and for whom all things were made from nothing and who, in the fullness of time, took flesh of the Virgin Mary and was made man.
This Christian cosmology or understanding of the universe emerged from the Hebrew Scriptures and was completed and enriched by the final and full revelation of God in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. And we affirm these truths every Lord’s Day in the Creed of the Council of Nicaea. The Bible opens with an account of creation with the words “In the beginning, God” and closes with an account of the end of days and the words “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”
Here we should note that modern science is finally catching up to and affirming the truth of the Scriptural view that the universe is not eternal. The physical sciences affirm both that the universe had a definitive beginning about 14 billion years ago which was the origin of spacetime, a singularity usually called the Big Bang, and that in several billion more years the cosmos will have an end as it collapses into a Big Crunch or perhaps is exhausted in a Big Freeze. Perhaps not coincidentally, the notion of the Big Bang was shapely largely by the work of a Belgian mathematician, astronomer, and physicist named Georges Lemaître, who was also a Catholic priest.
It is within this framework of the beginning and ending of all things that we must understand the Scriptures appointed for this penultimate Sunday of the now ending old Year of Grace. The Prophet Daniel was given a vision of the Last Day and of the final judgment of every man and woman who ever lived, and it is sobering to contemplate the possibility of becoming an everlasting horror and disgrace rather than to live forever and shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament by leading others to justice.
In Daniel’s vision, the arrival of the archangel Michael will signal the end of this world in a time unsurpassed in distress, but Michael’s appearance will also announce the coming of the new heavens and the new earth. What those new heavens and earth will be has not yet been revealed, and in the words of Saint Paul “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9)
But we do know, both by science and by grace through faith, that the End of Days is inevitable: “In those days (says the Lord) the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”
These are not the ravings of a lunatic; they are the solemn words of the Word made flesh, who then goes on to say, quoting from the Prophet Daniel, “And then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in the clouds’ with great power and glory, and then he will send out his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky.”
Even allowing for the poetic imagery and drama of this language, this is a startling vision of how the world will end, and we should live our lives each day against the horizon both of the end of all things at the Last Day and of our own personal end at death. But for those who are in Christ and have already been made a new creation by Holy Baptism, the result of this vision should not be fear but watchful expectation.
We who already live the life of grace by faith, hope, and love and who are already nourished unto eternal life by the Word of God and the Sacraments of the New Covenant should not tremble at the approach either of our own death or of the Last Day but should instead sing with the psalmist: “My heart is glad and my soul rejoices; my body, too, abides in confidence, because you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption.”
Friends, the universe is not eternal, but we are. And pulp fiction aside, there are no gods other than the Lord, we cannot undo reality with a finger snap, and we cannot reverse or change time with a twist of our wrist or by any other means. But we can live in the truth of the eternal Word of God and be taught by his words which never pass away.
We can surrender our entire lives in the obedience of faith to the designer and maker of all things, the Master of all time, and to him we can sing with the psalmist: “You will show me the path to life, fullness of joys in your presence, the delights at your right hand forever.”
But in order to share in that eternal joy we must live now by grace through faith, hope, and love according to the whole counsel of God, the Gospel of him who is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last, the One who was, who is, and who is to come, the same yesterday, today, and forever: the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!
This is the text of my homily for 17 November 2024, the 33rd Sunday of the Year.
Fr Jay Scott Newman