Perhaps the most important thing Holy Scripture tells us about the end of the world is that it will come. The Lord explains to the disciples in considerable detail that the end will be like a harvest, when...
Perhaps the most important thing Holy Scripture tells us about the end of the world is that it will come. The Lord explains to the disciples in considerable detail that the end will be like a harvest, when creation brings its fruit to the Creator. But what He adds next is also very important: we do not know the hour at which our Lord will come. Later, after the Resurrection, the Savior will say this even more definitely: it is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority. It follows that we need to know the fact that the end will come, since the Lord Himself bears witness to it, but we are not meant to know the time of its coming. Moreover, in His parables Christ calls us always to be ready for that day.
The ancient Christians expected the end of the world to come from day to day, and this expectation, on the one hand, inspired them and gave them strength to withstand persecutions and temptations, but, on the other hand, after two or three centuries had passed, it became the cause of a certain perplexity, disappointment, and rethinking of the Gospel. In our time we have so forgotten the very essence of the coming end that dates and signs of its arrival trouble us more than what we will say at the Last Judgment.
The point is presumably that the news of the end of time is necessary for us not so that we might determine our actions and deeds in some different way. We must live in God’s truth always: on the day after the creation of the world and on the eve of its end. Rather, the fact that history is to be completed is needed so that we may have the right attitude toward this world and its realities. The heavens will grow old like a worn-out garment, and together with them evil and suffering, violence and lies, which we bring into creation, will disappear. This is at once a day of judgment and a day of hope. We will see Christ and we will see His creation in all the beauty He intended. Compared with this, the whole burden of dependencies and illusions that fills our consciousness and from which we will in any case have to part recedes into the background.
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24:32 Learn a parable - Our Lord having spoke of the signs preceding the two grand events, concerning which the apostles had inquired, begins here to speak of the time of them. And to the question proposed, Mat 24:3, concerning the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, he answers Mat 24:34. Concerning the time of the end of the world, he answers Mat 24:36. Mar 13:28; Luk 21:29.
24:34 This generation of men now living shall not pass till all these things be done - The expression implies, that great part of that generation would be passed away, but not the whole. Just so it was. For the city and temple were destroyed thirty - nine or forty years after.
24:36 But of that day - The day of judgment; Knoweth no man - Not while our Lord was on earth. Yet it might be afterward revealed to St. John consistently with this.
24:37 Luk 17:26.
24:40 One is taken - Into God's immediate protection: and one is left - To share the common calamities. Our Lord speaks as having the whole transaction present before his eyes.
24:41 Two women shall be grinding - Which was then a common employment of women.
24:42 Ye know not what hour your Lord cometh - Either to require your soul of you, or to avenge himself of this nation. Mar 13:33; Luk 12:35; Luk 21:34.
24:45 Who then is the faithful and wise servant - Which of you aspires after this character? Wise - Every moment retaining the clearest conviction, that all he now has is only intrusted to him as a steward: Faithful - Thinking, speaking, and acting continually, in a manner suitable to that conviction.
24:48 But if that evil servant - Now evil, having put away faith and a good conscience.
24:51 And allot him his portion with the hypocrites - The worst of sinners, as upright and sincere as he was once. If ministers are the persons here primarily intended, there isa peculiar propriety in the expression. For no hypocrisy can be baser, than to call ourselves ministers of Christ, while we are the slaves of avarice, ambition, or sensuality. Wherever such are found, may God reform them by his grace, or disarm them of that power and influence, which they continually abuse to his dishonour, and to their own aggravated damnation!