Tuesday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
November 26, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/112624.cfm

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I, John, looked and there was a white cloud,
and sitting on the cloud one who looked like a son of man,
with a gold crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand.
Another angel came out of the temple,
crying out in a loud voice to the one sitting on the cloud,
“Use your sickle and reap the harvest,
for the time to reap has come,
because the earth’s harvest is fully ripe.”
So the one who was sitting on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth,
and the earth was harvested.
Revelation 14:14-16

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The Book of Revelation paints another image for us of the end times. We wonder about it, don’t we? The image of God reaping the harvest of which we are a part! Wow!

What will it really be like at the end of the world? Will it come in my lifetime? Will we see our beloveds again? Will we celebrate together the Second Coming of Christ? John wondered the same things we do, and today’s reading describes how he imagined the Parousia.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We spend time in prayer, not so much imagining the unimaginable, but in asking ourselves if we are ready to receive the fullness of Christ for all eternity.

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Poetry: For the Interim Time – John O’Donohue

When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.

You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.

“The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born.”

You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.

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Music: The Ride of the Valkyries – Richard Wagner

Sometimes when prayer is beyond words, music may capture our feelings and speak them to God for us. I love to play this piece when praying these end-time passages.