The End of the World 

and Facebook

Advent is both the season of “O Come, O Come Emanuel” and those final words of the book of Revelation, “Come, Lord Jesus”.  This liturgical season celebrates waiting—the long waiting of the Jewish people for their promised Messiah and the long waiting afterwards for the return of Jesus, Messiah and Lord.  Advent also celebrates his daily coming in a thousand different ways as well as that final moment of our rebirth into eternal life. 

But what does Facebook have to do with the end of the world much less Advent?  I do not know about your friends on that aspect of social media but some of mine regularly play the prophets of gloom and doom pronouncing the End Times are here and boy, if you do not shape up, you are damned for all eternity.  In other words, God is not only angry; he is just a hair’s breath away from rage. 

Personally, I believe God weeps when he sees what is happening in our world.  Oh, yes, the Scripture is threaded with God’s just anger.  However, the concept of an angry God was how the Hebrews and later, the Jews, often perceived their mysterious and totally "other".  As result, the modern reader of the Bible may also focus only on his wrath and miss many of the tender of descriptions of God in the Scriptures. For example, consider the these words from Scripture “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you (Is 49:15).”

But I am getting ahead of myself. 

Perhaps the best way to prepare for Advent is to begin now—before the mall’s insanities at its finest starts.  And your spiritual quest is as close as your Facebook page.  Even though you may not have friends who are gloom and doom, they are out there.  Starving to death.  Starving because they believe the devil is behind every rock, which means their spirituality comes up short in terms of the joy Jesus promised would be ours. 

To be sure, the evil one does exist and to a large extent most of the evil in our world is obvious.  However, the other face of evil, by its very nature, does not wish to be seen much less noticed.  That is why St. Ignatius’ rules of discernment can be such a help to those who take their relationship with Jesus seriously. 

What most people in general do not know as well as these modern prophets of doom is that during the last 2,000 years there have been 46 different occasions when groups of people succumbed to the terror of the End Times. I shared that with one of my Facebook prophets of doom and then I asked, “What makes this era any different from those other 46?”  Yes, our faith teaches there will be a final judgment where we will be held accountable for our actions. However, I want to live my life in a way that reflects the judgment of the nations depicted in the Gospel of Matthew (Mt 25: 31-46). 

While there are End Times passages in the Gospels, there are also passages that warn, “Be ready!” Jesus Himself would declare, “The Son of Man does not know the day or the hour.”  So if Jesus did not know how could we be so sure these are the End Times? 

My prophet of doom had no answer as to what makes these times different. I also confronted his tirades concerning the government and our society with a similar question, “What are you doing to help?”  Each time there was no answer. It would be easy for me to unfriend him. However, I let him rant and rave on my page where I can respond rather than dismiss him into cyberspace with the possibility that he will post his toxic message unchallenged elsewhere. I know it is impossible for me to change his point of view by trying to reason with him—that’s God’s job. Thus, with every Holy Communion I receive, I pray to feed those, who—like my own prophet of doom—experience a starvation as severe as any victim of drought, war or flood. 

One last bit of food for thought. Advent is more than one season of the liturgical year as God is always coming to us. St. Teresa of Calcutta once said, “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come.  We have only today.  Let us begin.” Yes, let us begin today; God’s people are waiting for us to be prophets of hope until the day Jesus does come.  Even on Facebook.