Jesus uses the fig tree to show how his return is as inevitable as the turning of the seasons. If he says something is going to happen, it will, in time, happen. Jesus keeps his promises.

You don’t need the cover of the bulletin to tell you what time it is, at least according to the liturgical calendar. Ordinary Time never comes to a close with a whimper but with an apocalypse. When we hear Daniel envisioning the arrival of Michael, the archangel of the last battle, we know Judgment is on its way.

“My swimming coach died today,” the young woman told her classmate. Her coach since childhood, he had been a friend and surrogate father to her and all her teammates. How could it be, she asked, full of sadness and wonder.

Let us pray that in the present hour and in the end-times to come God may find us faithful.

This one offered one sacrifice for sins. The Letter to the Hebrews goes out of its way to make the point that Jesus is the one High Priest who has made one offering that is truly effective in forgiving sin. There’s no reason to try to make sin-offerings day after day because for one they’re no longer necessary and for another they don’t work.

Some of the stories in the Bible read like a science-fiction thriller or horror drama. In the apocalyptic literature, such as the book of Daniel, we read of the sun and moon darkening, stars falling out of the sky, and the very “powers in the heavens” shaken at their core.

To bear other people’s afflictions, everyone has courage and enough to spare. —Benjamin Franklin