NOTES for Mat 24:32-51

Those who reflect on the time of the Second Coming and the Last Judgment for some reason pay more attention to the cataclysms accompanying times of crisis than to Jesus’ perfectly clear words that, at that awaited moment, normal everyday life will continue: neither ordinary work, nor weddings, nor certainly eating will cease. The greatest upheavals will take place not in the earth’s crust or the atmosphere, but in people’s lives and souls. The choice that the Lord asks us to make is already being made now, quietly and imperceptibly to most of those around us. People who look exactly alike make a choice, but they choose differently. For a time they remain side by side, but the hour of separation will come, when each person will go where they have chosen.

It is interesting that here Jesus once again mentions the fig tree, which He sets before His disciples as an example of one that can sense changes in the times. These words make us remember once more the fig tree that bore no fruit.

But we are called always to be ready, to bear fruit, and to place it in the Lord’s hands.