STAND FIRM AND KEEP THE TRADITION WE HAVE TAUGHT YOU

STAND FIRM AND KEEP THE TRADITION WE HAVE TAUGHT YOU

By Fr. Felix (African Times Guest Writer)

The reading as it stands warns against any idea

that the Day of the Lord is imminent. Between

the two halves of the reading comes a passage,

omitted in our reading, about the Great Revolt

and the Man of Wickedness.

These are to precede the final triumph of Christ.

Other writings of the New Testament (and still

others of Judaism) foretell a period of the

triumph of evil, a time of testing for the

servants of God. ‘Prophets of doom’ have, over

the ages, pronounced this to be realised in one

particular phenomenon after another: the loss

of the Papal States, Nazism, Communism.

However, the triumph of Christ on the Day of the

Lord also is imaged in dramatic and cosmic

terms which it is now impossible to take

literally, the stars falling from heaven, the sun

going down at noon, etc. Shorn of its

apocalyptic imagery, the message of this Great

Revolt and Man of Wickedness foretells that for

Christ’s faithful there will be a time of dire evil

and testing.

This need not necessarily be a single public

event, affecting all people at once. On a

personal level there surely is in every Christian’s

life a time of especially dire testing and

temptation, whether it be in family affairs,

sexual or business temptation, or loss of faith.

It is then that we need to stand firm and rely on

the traditions and the sure hope given by Christ

Jesus.