Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle B

Reflecting on Mark 13: 24-32

I have an image in my mind, a kind of “save page” in my soul, that holds who I am and how I will always see the world.  It’s an actual picture of our backyard, circa 1958.  My sister and I are swinging on the swing-set, and my baby brother is playing in his crib on the porch.  My dad and two older brothers are playing basketball on our driveway basketball court, just outside our yard and just inside the picture. My mother’s fire-red roses climb up the fence and spill out in bushes that encircle the green, green grass.

It rains most afternoons, sending heavenly moisture into the ground and giving the grass that deep green, and the roses that deep red, that explodes in my memory even after all these years.

It seems sometimes that the world is ending.  Winters are too mild. Summers are too hot.  In the new normal of drought and fires, roses and lawns are replaced with xeriscapes.

Do kids still swing on swing-sets in fragrant backyards, and does that even matter?  I guess not.  It looks like the world will keep spinning.  Children will delight their parents, and will grow to be parents themselves.  Generations will pass away, and the moon will still give light, and the stars will stay in the sky.  The heavens will not be shaken.

Yet, the world is ending, and someday we will see the Creator of all this beauty.  Blessed are those who have radiated so much light in their lives that the shock of all that Light won’t slow them down from receiving the joyous welcomes of all who have gone before them, marked with sign of faith.

We are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love (William Blake).

In what ways are you “beaming love”?

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I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Ordinary Time - Cycle B