NOTES for Mat 24:3-35
Speaking of His return in glory, the Savior gives special emphasis to three points that are important for us. One of them concerns the thought that constantly troubles us: nothing is known about the time of His return. We would very much like to fill what seems to us to be this gap in the Gospel, perhaps because we think that God is trying to hide something from us, or perhaps because we are truly afraid: what if He finds us unprepared?
Jesus Himself says that this is entirely possible; to avoid it, we must not try to calculate what cannot be calculated, but live in constant readiness to meet the One whom, as we publicly proclaim, we await and are always glad to see. In His other parables about the Kingdom, He also speaks about what prevents us from being ready for this encounter, pointing first of all to distrust. The parable of the talents is a fine example: what destroyed the servant who returned what he had received to his master without profit was precisely distrust. He was clearly frightened by something that did not frighten the others: what if he proved to be a poor financier and failed to manage the money properly?
Meanwhile, the Kingdom—and the parable concerns the gifts of the Kingdom—can spread in the world only if everyone who has shared in its life increases, through himself, the fullness of that to which he has been joined; if he himself becomes a bearer of the Kingdom’s breath and love. This is all very well, but what about those who, despite all the efforts of its witnesses, still do not know the Kingdom? Are they all condemned? The Savior does not think so. Speaking of the Last Judgment, He says that everyone brought before the Judgment is judged according to how he treated “these least brothers,” by whom Jesus evidently means His disciples and followers. No one is cut off from the Kingdom and from salvation, not even those who, in the present age—the age of the advancing Kingdom—have remained outside it.
God will assess their lives in relation to the Kingdom and to those who lived its life. This is not about privileges for Christians on the day of Judgment, but about an objective reality: after the transformation of the world, each person’s destiny is determined according to the measure of that person’s objective participation in this process. For the day of the Savior’s return ultimately depends precisely on the measure of each person’s participation. It is undetermined because its nearness depends not only on God, but also on us.