Sunday Mass

10:30am -
     Tresidder Oak Room
4:30pm -
     Memorial Church
No 10pm Mass on 11/22

Daily Liturgy

MWF 12:20pm -
     Memorial Church
TTH 12:20pm -
     Old Union, Sanctuary

Adoration of the
Blessed Sacrament

Tuesday 9-10:30pm -
     Old Union - Sanctuary

Confessions

Tuesday 1:30pm-2:30pm
and 7:30pm - 9pm
      Old Union, 304 or 319
Or by appointment:
     Call: (650)725-0060

Religious Ramblings is a weekly column in our church bulletin on spiritual musings related to our current lives and modern society.

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Apocalypse Now?

November 15, 2009

Today's gospel selection from Mark is a specific genre of biblical literature called apocalyptic literature. Most of us, including me, know very little about this unique form of prophetic writing, so I did a little research. First, I went online to look up books on Apocalypse, and discovered 68,314 results in one online bookstore alone! Most of these focus on the end of civilization as we know it, with such titles as: Pocket Guide to the Afterlife--The Official Field Manual to the End of the World, Countdown to the Apocalypse: Learn to Read the Signs That the Last Days Have Begun, and my personal favorite: Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse. There is a very famous set of 16 novels on this subject called the "Left Behind" series, which pits the forces of good against the Anti-Christ in a final cosmic battle. We know that there have been several sects of people who left their belongings and went to a mountaintop or other sacred place to await "the Rapture", or the return of Jesus. As you might suspect, this frenzy, which still crops up now and then in the news, peaked at the time of the millennium. There is also a genre of contemporary literature called Post-Apocalyptic, and includes classics like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and, most recently, Cormac McCarthy's The Road. They deal with the aftermath of a cataclysmic event which wipes out all, or nearly all, of humanity. A lot of Science fiction and fantasy can be called apocalyptic or post apocalyptic, and has become very popular in recent years. Certainly the specter of a nuclear holocaust feeds these plots. In this kind of literature we forget our own world and engage in imaginative and fantastic explorations of another world entirely.

But what is apocalyptic literature, as understood by biblical writers? We find it in both Jewish and Christian Scriptures, and strictly speaking, it implies a revelation made by God to someone concerning hidden things. The word Apocalypse means "lifting the veil" on hitherto unknown secrets. This form of literature, which flourished in the years between 200BCE and 150CE, was especially popular during times of suffering or calamity when just believers looked forward to the intervention of God on their behalf. Most of the writings concernthemselves with the upheaval of the political and economic systems of the world which kept people oppressed--described creatively in very obscure and symbolic terms, often employing cosmic phenomena--and the triumph of the reign of God.

The most famous biblical examples of apocalyptic literature in the Jewish Scriptures are the Book of Daniel and sections of Ezekiel, Joel and Zachariah; the Christian Scriptures have the Book of Revelation and Mark 13 (Little Apocalypse) from which we get today's gospel reading. Biblical authors of this type of literature employed all kinds of imagery and symbolism which appealed to the imagination of their listeners: visions, dreams, numbers, fantastic beasts with many heads and horns, lions with wings. The imagery used in ancient times, while fantastic even then, is really alien to people of our times. What we also need to realize is that this type of literature was not meant to be read as history, and these events as described are not literal predictions of cosmic catastrophe. Because of their exotic "creativity" and because of the natural fear about the end of life as we know it, there is a tendency to spend a lot of time on the details of that final crisis and a lot of time looking for signs that the world is coming to a screeching halt. The purpose of those early writers was not to frighten people, but to offer them comfort: God is in charge, and God will vindicate those who have suffered. These writers clearly hoped for and believed in the triumph of God in end time. Many people, including Paul and the author of Mark, fully expected to see Jesus returning in glory and instituting a new age during their own lifetime. The acclamation we often recite after the Consecration echoes this hope: "Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again."

It is easy to get distracted by all the details of how the world will end and miss the most important part of the message: God loves us and is with us, even until the end of time.

Nancy Greenfield
Chaplain

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